


take your silver spoon, dig your grave

by fliptomybside



Category: One Direction (Band), Taylor Swift (Musician)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Dubious Morality, Eating Disorders, F/F, F/M, Infidelity, Mildly Dubious Consent, Multi, Non-Graphic Violence, Paranormal, Polyamory, Witches
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-25
Updated: 2017-03-12
Packaged: 2018-08-24 11:11:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 22,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8370022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fliptomybside/pseuds/fliptomybside
Summary: "We will be monsters, alone in the world, but we will have each other." - Mary Shelley, Frankenstein(Or, witches in New Orleans taking no shit, ft. sirens, time traveling, invisibility, and polyamory.)





	1. I'm right over here, why can't you see me//Bella

**Author's Note:**

> This is all thanks to an anon I got that said, "the dream: a witchy AU with Taylor, Cara, Kendall, Bella, and Harry where they're all roommates." As it turns out, this is everything I never knew I wanted, so I had to write it. Each part is going to be told from a different POV, and my goal is to update every week. The rating reflects the content of future chapters, and I've tried to tag everything that might be triggering, so please heed those warnings/tell me if there's anything I missed. Thanks to [ritasfault](http://ritasfault.tumblr.com) for being a constant cheerleader, sending endless inspiration, and making beautiful art that you can see [here](http://polaroidgirlfriend.tumblr.com/post/152277362916/take-your-silver-spoon-dig-your-grave-1-we) on tumblr. [Littlecather](http://archiveofourown.org/users/littlecather/pseuds/littlecather) was lovely and beta-ed this for me. This fic would be a shell of itself without their input and suggestions, tbh. Anyway, any remaining mistakes are mine, title from Fleetwood Mac's Gold Dust Woman, please don't let the real people that this is about see it, etc.

Making the decision is relatively easy, after everything. Not what Bella expected, after years of tip toeing around the idea that LA wasn’t for her in any way, shape, or form. It’s claustrophobic in all the bad ways, and she always feels like it’s a second away from swallowing her up. 

She doesn’t mind eating lunch by herself. She does it a lot, truthfully, but it stings more than she really wants to admit when it’s involuntary. Cafe Habana is buzzing around her, no one any the wiser that she’s just been stood up by her sister. It’s not the first time, not even close. Bella picks at her nails, her cuticles frayed. Her manicure’s chipped and it looks like shit, but she doesn’t feel like getting it redone, even now that her afternoon’s opened up unexpectedly. Anyway. It’s not the first time, but it’s the first time Gigi was on the opposite coast instead of being across town and stuck in too much traffic for it to be worth it. 

The waiter keeps hovering in her periphery, like he doesn’t want to embarrass her. Bella exhales forcefully then plasters a smile on her face. He jumps to attention when she makes eye contact, even though she isn’t doing anything. Hasn’t done that kind of thing since the early days of high school. 

“Are you ready to order?” he asks, voice smooth and devoid of any kind of accent. He’s got hair that’s too blonde to be natural and a tan that says he uses the CVS version of Jergens, so definitely a struggling actor, and probably wishes he worked at a Mel’s Drive-In instead of here. 

“Hi, yeah, could I just get the buttermilk pancakes?” 

She smiles at him again and watches him fight against the judgment that flickers across his face, definitely at the fact that she’s ordering pancakes at one in the afternoon. He takes her menu with a smile, face smooth again.

“I’ll put it right in for you,” he says, and then she’s alone again, free to wallow in self pity and resentment. She’ll hate herself for ordering pancakes later, but right now all she wants to do is eat as many carbs as she can handle, like that’ll undo all the negative things in her life. 

Her eyelids feel droopy even though she didn’t wake up until eleven today, and skipped the gym. She texted her trainer instead of calling, and ignored the frowny face he sent back. He’s probably already told her mom. Bella’s surprised that she hasn’t gotten a text from her about it yet. She clears her throat and checks her phone again. Still no response from Gigi, either, though judging by the photos Bella saw of her with Zayn, she’s more than a little preoccupied. 

It’s embarrassing, sometimes, the way Gigi moves from boy to boy like it’s the only thing she’s good for. Bella almost feels bad thinking that, but it’s been so long since Gigi was just Gigi. Since she called Bella to talk about nothing, since they curled up on the couch together and watched Grease. Now Bella just watches as her big sister defines herself by her relationships, like she isn’t powerful and whole by herself. It’s not like she doesn’t know how intoxicating it is, having someone look at you like you’re their whole world. Of fucking course it is, but it’s not—it’s not more important than having lunch with your sister, Bella thinks, feeling the hot rush of tears behind her eyes. 

She blinks rapidly and brushes her hair out of her face before she reaches for her water glass. It’s slippery with condensation under her fingers, and the water is icy cool as it slides down her throat. She thumbs through her phone, draws up the pictures again like she’s pressing on a bruise just to see if it still hurts. It does, of course. It hasn’t been long enough that it doesn’t sting, and Bella’s not really sure if she’ll ever get to a point where it doesn’t. Gigi’s face is half sunglasses, half blinding white smile, her fingers wrapped tightly around Zayn’s. She towers over him, and it’s almost comical. Bella wonders idly if that’s something he cares about, or if they’re both too sex blind to see how fucking stupid they’re acting. 

She’s still going through the pictures, forcing herself to look at every single one of them, when her pancakes arrive. Her stomach grumbles embarrassingly loudly, and she hopes the waiter can’t hear it. 

“Thanks so much,” she says, wincing internally at how fake her voice sounds. He’s already moving on, though, faint smile on his face as he starts to back away.

“Just let me know if you need anything else, all right?” he says, and then he’s off, making small talk with his next table in hopes of getting a better tip, probably. 

The pancakes smell unbelievable but she pauses for a second, thinks about how empty her stomach is and how familiar that feels. How she doesn’t want to throw it away on empty carbs like this, but desperate times call for desperate measures, apparently. She still feels weird about eating stuff like this in public. It’s annoying, and she does her best to ignore it, but she can picture the disapproving look on her mom’s face with every bite. 

It takes half the stack for her to email her dad. Not because he’ll say no or put up a fight, because he won’t. He’s been a pushover for years, since long before the divorce, and even more so after mom remarried, then divorced again. She knows that it’s a string of events that she won’t be able to stop once she’s put it into motion. There’s syrup on her thumb when she goes to type the email, and it smudges her screen. Even that makes her want to cry with frustration, like it’s a physical reminder of all the little ways in which she messes up. 

She hits send quickly, doesn’t give herself a chance to take it back. New Orleans. A new start. Somewhere far enough from all this that she can let herself forget how it felt to hold herself in all the time. Where she can breathe in all the way and rebuild atrophied muscles and be herself in ways she hasn’t in a long time.

She lets herself finish the pancakes, and picks the least flattering of all the paparazzi shots and sends it to Gigi. It’s mean and petty in ways that she usually doesn’t allow, but the rejection stings, and Bella doesn’t let herself feel bad about it. 

-

Dad’s emailed her back pictures of a house by the time she gets back to her apartment. He already owns it, he says, and it’s just been waiting for someone to come along and inhabit it. She snorts at his wording, the awkward formality that’s his signature style. She feels a flicker of guilt at how easy it was, acquiring a house with a single email. It’s hard to remind herself that it isn’t normal, because it is, for her. There’s no privilege like that which comes with wealthy, divorced parents, she thinks. But it’s not—she’s not wasting this opportunity. It feels like the start of everything, even if she’s not entirely sure what, exactly, everything entails just yet. Gigi standing her up all the way from New York City just set off what was already a ticking time bomb. She might as well ride it all the way out, spread her metaphorical wings, as it were. 

Telling her mother is going to be the hard part, even if they aren’t close, not really. Everyone has a complicated relationship with their mom, Bella knows. But it’s different, it’s layers of distrust and years of lying and pretending to be someone she isn’t. Months of whittling herself down into a shell of her former self, until she fit into who her mom wanted her to be with room to spare. 

Dinner will be easiest, probably, Bella thinks. Yolanda will be more focused on the food than anything else, her focus on dieting taking precedence over most things. She feels guilty about that, too. Taking advantages of her mother’s weaknesses, ferreting out all of her ticks and buttons. It feels cold and calculated sometimes, and it’s easier in some ways to think of her as anyone but her mother. 

Bella shakes off the guilt and fires off a text before face planting on her unmade bed. Her stomach feels uneasy from both the pancakes and the fact that she’s about to go and uproot her entire life. Modeling, her little apartment in West Hollywood, her mom, her brother. Her sort of friends. It’s been a long time coming, if she’s honest. Slowly letting herself slip out of her old social circles until even Kendall doesn’t call as often as she used to. It hurts, sometimes. Knowing firsthand how easy it is to fall out of people’s lives. She reaches for her pillow and hugs it tight to her chest. It still smells fresh out of the dryer, the Snuggle brand dryer sheets she bought a week ago doing their job. 

Her phone vibrates on the bed behind her once, twice, then stops. Definitely mom. Probably not Gigi. Bella knows better than to expect her to respond. She’ll get nothing but radio silence for at least a week for the last text she sent, but she still can’t bring herself to feel bad about it. 

It’s her mom, agreeing to dinner when she finally reaches for it. 

_‘found a new recipe for spaghetti squash yesterday, with avocado oil,’_ she’s sent, and Bella resists the urge to roll her eyes, because frankly, it sounds awful, especially since she’s full from pancakes. Bella knows she won’t be making it, anyway, so she doesn’t have to feel too guilty about the way she’ll only be able to pick at it. Her mom’s always got some new recipe she’s having someone make for her, always low calorie, veggie heavy and everything Bella doesn’t want to eat. 

_‘sounds great,’_ she sends back, glad that her mom can’t read sarcasm over text or in person, even after two teenage daughters and all of these years in Los Angeles. She’s dreading the inevitable confrontation, knows her mom won’t agree, that she’ll tell her she’s throwing it all away, but Bella feels like that’s what she’s doing staying here. 

Modeling’s—it’s fine, but it only works as an outlet for so long. She can stare down the camera all day and all it’ll ever do is stare back and remind her that she could be ten pounds lighter or her waist could be an inch thinner and that would catapult her into superstardom. It doesn’t give her a thrill. It was all right at the beginning, a tiny glimmer of the power buzzing under her skin, but it faded too fast, and all anyone ever wanted from her was just five more pounds or her nose like this or her hair a different color so she wouldn’t look so much like Gigi. 

She wants to scrape off that skin. It doesn’t even feel like hers anymore, just a shell constructed completely by someone else. There’s no power in her gaze here, even though it’s still in her, latent and rusty. It’s just a promise of who she could be, sizzling through her veins, just waiting to break free and transform her into someone else. Someone who doesn’t get left behind, someone who does more than glare at cameras when they’re pointed in her direction. She has that in her. She can feel it, even though she’s pushed it down for longer than she cares to think about.

-

She emails her dad and takes a scalding shower before driving to her mom’s. She’s full of nervous energy, feels jumpy and unsettled. It’s done now, there’s no going back. The house is hers, deep in New Orleans, away from all the constraints and pollution of LA. In her mind, the fight’s already over, and the last thing she wants is the inevitable tears from her mom, the disapproval that’ll surely follow, because she might play dumb sometimes, but she’ll know why Bella’s really leaving. 

The pasta is as disgusting as she imagines, but she tries to force a smile at her mom through her mouthful. It’s hard. 

Yolanda’s oblivious, or at least she’s pretending to be, taking a dainty bite every five minutes, spacing it out as much as she can, even though her plate’s still full. For a second, Bella considers turning the force of her gaze on her. Letting the heat build up behind her eyes and smiling syrupy sweet and revealing that she’s leaving and never wants to come back.

It doesn’t work that way, she knows. She’s not sure if it’s because they’re related, or because her mom can do it too. She suspects, anyway. It’s been so long since she watched her mom that intently, terrified and searching for a sign that they were the same that she’s not sure if the memories are real or found. Either way, Bella figured it out a long time ago, and cried with frustration when her mom just stared her down, unblinking, when she turned up the charm, like mom used to call it. _The charm_ , Bella huffs out a laugh after swallowing the cold noodles. Like calling it that made it any less powerful or dangerous or intoxicating. 

She gets through half a plate before she rips the bandaid off.

“I’m moving to New Orleans next week.”

It’s abrupt and a total non sequitur, but Bella doesn’t know how else to broach the subject. There’s not really an organic way to work, ‘ _hey, I’m leaving you and my entire life here behind to move halfway across the country so I can be myself and work my magic on the unsuspecting populace,_ ’ into conversation. 

There’s a solid thirty seconds of silence. Bella pointedly doesn’t look up, focuses on the slimy zoodles that she really doesn’t want to eat. She can feel her face reddening, knows that her mom’s about to unleash firestorm of comments that she doesn’t want to hear, and as much as she knows this is the right decision, she doesn’t want to hear the litany of reasons why she shouldn’t. 

“This isn’t a very funny joke, Bella,” her mom says, completely abandoning the bowl of food in front of her. Bella grits her teeth and stares her down. It’s hard, because she remembers smiling up at her mom when she was little, looking at her like she hung the sun, like she had all the answers. Sometimes Bella’s still not over the slow realization that she doesn’t. That they aren’t on the same page, not at all, and that the best thing for both of them is space. 

“Good thing it isn’t a joke, then.” 

More silence. Not a good sign, historically. Bella can remember countless arguments, standing in the hall outside her bedroom, screaming at each other, and all of those moments were easier to swallow than this one. Silence is different. It’s cold and unrelenting and loud in its own way, and it makes Bella want to scream, even though she knows it’s useless.

She watches her mom exhale, and it’s shaky, like she’s trying to collect herself. Like what Bella’s said is actually terrible, like she’s murdered the neighbor or something. 

“Why?”

It’s not what she was expecting. She thought it would be a barrage of cutting words, telling her she’s throwing away everything Yolanda’s worked for, that she doesn’t know what it’s like to make it in a new place with no support system in place, that she’s walking away from her family, that she’s ruining her career. Not a why, all calm and quiet, now that her words have settled. 

“You know why, mom,” Bella says, and she forces herself to meet her mom’s eyes. She’s not sure if she has to say it, if she has to spell it out after all these years of pretending it wasn’t a thing, that she was totally normal, that she could just go on like this for the rest of her life. 

Her mom looks like all the fight’s been drained out her, the dark circles under her eyes suddenly so big that Bella could curl up and make a home there, if she wanted.

“I’m not sure I do, Bells,” she says, and Bella flinches at the nickname. She goes weak so easily, and she hates it, wants to run as far away as she can. She’s lost count of the number of times her mom’s said things that cut her too deep to ever really heal, won't miss the way her eyes run up and down Bella’s body, like she can read every extra pound on her, but it’s still her mom. Still her mom, who let her cry into her belly for years and years before she learned to stand up for herself. Her mom, who went to every dance recital, every equestrian event under the sun, who stood in the front row every time and beamed up at her like she was the one who hung the sun. 

“This isn’t who I am. You know that, don’t pretend you don’t. Don’t pretend that I haven’t been a paper doll in all of this. For years. I don’t even look like me anymore,” Bella says, swallowing past the lump of tears in her throat. 

“I’m not asking for your approval, or for you to understand, I just. I’m bowing out. Making my exit gracefully before it all boils over.”

She gets an eye roll at that, and it’s a breath of levity. The room still feels heavy, like one wrong move will make everything collapse, but it’s not nothing. It’s not insults or screaming or crying, so she’ll take it. 

“Don’t be dramatic, we have Gigi for that. No one’s going to boil over, least of all you,” her mom says, and Bella rolls her eyes at that. She’s not going to touch the subject of Gigi with a ten foot pole, because it’s past what she has the energy for in this moment. 

“Sure, maybe it’s not imminent. But I’m not waiting for that point, mom. I’m not. I don’t want that. I don’t want to walk around like I’m holding my breath all the time. That’s what it feels like.”

“So you’re going to what, let yourself go and steamroll over everyone you come into contact with? Wrap them all around your little finger and suck them dry? Take away their ability to make their own decisions?”

The words tumble out like she can’t stop them, and this is what Bella was waiting for. The secret mean thoughts that her mom tamps down most of the time. What she really thinks, deep down. The way she’s a little bit afraid of what Bella can do, even if she can’t fall victim to it herself. She can feel her cheeks going red again, the hot rush of tears, the way mom just doesn’t understand it burrowing under her skin and latching on to every insecurity she’s ever had. 

It’s not like that, she wants to shout, because it’s not, it’s just her, it’s not malicious. It’s like—an extension, it’s easy like breathing. Natural. She doesn’t seek people out just to make them hers. She was young and stupid once, but it doesn’t make her a monster. In her head, it’s simple, all the good she could do, slipping in and out of people’s lives, pushing them away from wrongs. It’s not simple in her mom’s kitchen, cold and modern and mom staring at her like she’s just broken her heart. 

“I’m not asking you to understand,” Bella says finally. There are a million words on the tip of her tongue. Words that she’s uttered a million times before. Words that always fall on deaf ears, no matter how many times she says them. 

Her mom’s face is impassive now. Bella gets caught up in her high cheekbones, the way her blonde hair falls across her forehead. It’s hard to pick out the bits of her that look like her mom when she looks in the mirror, but she can see some of them now. The eyes. The obvious cheekbones. The parts of herself she hasn’t changed yet. Won’t change. 

“All right,” she says, pushing her chair back from the counter, disrupting Bella’s gaze. “I think it’s a dessert night, don’t you?”

The pancakes she had earlier say no, and it’s on the tip of her tongue, the memory of the hatred she’ll have when she wakes up after a day like today heavy on her mind, but she shakes it off. That’s not her anymore. 

“Sure,” she says, and her voice wavers, but neither of them acknowledge it. She walks her still full bowl over to the sink and pushes her dinner down the garbage disposal, tries to ignore the twinge of guilt at having wasted it. Mom’s is almost as bad, and Bella takes the bowl silently when she hands it over, pushes the noodles down the drain and flicks the switch, the noise of the disposal filling the silence. 

“You can drive. We’ll go for ice cream.”

Bella knows a peace offering when she sees it, and that’s what this is. It’s not acceptance, not really. She’s still stinging from her mom’s words earlier, knows that she isn’t going to change her mind anytime soon. It’s an impasse, really. Because they aren’t ever going to agree on this, Bella thinks. They’re too far apart, too different. She’s not a tiny blonde girl with giant blue eyes anymore, subconsciously wooing strangers. She’s an adult, for all intents and purposes. An adult doing something her mom doesn’t approve of. She’s not the first person who’s been in this situation, not by a long shot, and she won’t be the last, but it doesn’t make the sting any less painful.

She speeds going down the freeway, just a little. It feels good, window down and the wind harsh against her face, whipping her hair back. Her mom’s cracked the window a little, and even that feels like an outstretched hand, somehow. 

They end up at a little place where the five of them used to play mini golf. Before the divorce, before the rift between her and mom and Gigi started to feel insurmountable. Bella gets a sugar cone with a scoop of black raspberry chocolate chip, and her mom gets vanilla soft serve because they don’t have frozen yogurt, and Bella resists the urge to roll her eyes. 

People watching used to be one of her favorite things. Just sitting and observing, making up stories about everyone around her, trying to figure out what made them tick. This would be a prime opportunity for that, sitting on a bench that’s decidedly sticky, surrounded by half a dozen families with too many kids under the age of ten, but it’s hard to focus on anything but the weight of her mom next to her. 

It’s not as uncomfortable as it could be, but Bella feels like she’s sitting on a bed of nails. She doesn’t want to break the silence, or remind her mom of the fact that they used to come here when they were a unit. She’s beginning to regret bringing them here at all, a place so drenched in sunny childhood memories that they’re practically living breathing things, but when she looks over at her mom, she’s got a smile on her face and a tiny smudge of vanilla ice cream on her upper lip. 

“I think mini golfing here was the most athletic thing Anwar’s ever done,” she says, and Bella can’t help the laughter that bubbles out of her mouth. There’s ice cream dripping down the cone and onto her hand, cold and sticky, and the sun set’s warm on her back, and nothing’s perfect, but there’s a hum of nervous excitement under her skin, like she’s going to figure this out, somehow. 

“Set the bar low early, it’s the way to go,” Bella says, and she holds out the cone for her her mom to try. 

_It’s a peace offering_ , Bella tries to convey with her eyes, and she knows her mom can’t read minds and doesn’t understand her when she’s speaking half the time, but there must be a look on her face that’s sad or desperate enough to make her cave, because she plucks the cone delicately from Bella’s hand and takes a tiny lick. 

“You can admit that it’s a solid choice at any time, mom,” she says, and it feels like the grin that spreads across her lips when her mom laughs is going to split her face in two. 

“It’s a bit sweet,” she says, but she’s smiling, and she licks the melted ice cream off of her hand when she hands the cone back to Bella. 

-

Sleep doesn’t come easy that night. Not that she expects it to, really, but sometimes the emotional exhaustion of a fight with mom is enough to knock her out. She spends some quality time staring at her ceiling instead, starts a mental countdown of the nights she has left in LA. She isn’t going to miss it, that’s too strong a word. But it’s familiar even though it’s suffocating, and that’s what she’ll miss, the comfort that comes with knowing something like the back of your hand. 

She spends the next week going through the pictures of the house her dad sent obsessively. It’s like another world, nothing at all like her place in LA. It’s dark and not even close to pristine, shrouded in trees and feels like something from another time, even in photos. She alternates that with packing, carefully picking through the parts of her life here that she wants to bring with her. There aren’t many, when it comes down to it. It has to be a clean slate, if she’s really going to commit to this. She leaves behind all the sweatpants and short skirts and brings cut off jean shirts and t-shirts with holes under the arms that haven’t seen the light of day in years. She pulls the skimpiest dresses from the back of her closet and some sky high heels that she’s shied away from in the past few months just to cover all of her bases. 

One suitcase and one duffle bag. Her whole life narrowed down to just that. Bella knows she’ll probably regret it a month from now, when she’s tired of the same five shirts, but it feels good in this moment. She digs out the box of journals she started keeping the day she realized what she could do and packs them, too. She’s not ready to read them yet, wants to save them for when she’s settled, far away from here. They’re her origin story, of sorts. Her eight year old scrawl in bright purple ink, letters shaky with fear and excitement. The rainbow of colors she reveled in up until a few years ago, when she switched to black, her hand steady and tired. She should buy a new one, she thinks. Document what happens while she figures it all out, this part of her that she’s hidden for so long. 

-

Her mom puts Grease on the TV the night before she leaves, and they curl up on the couch like they did when Bella was a kid. She remembers serenading everyone with _Hopelessly Devoted To You_ at every opportunity, her voice wobbly and painfully earnest. She hums along with it now and rests her head on her mom’s shoulder. It’s bony, and she smells like expensive perfume and the dry cleaners. It’s familiar and for a split second, Bella wishes she could bottle it up and take it with her. The smallest reminder of what she had, even if it wasn’t what she needed. 

Bella can’t think of leaving as anything but permanent. John Travolta’s sitting on the bleachers and singing about summer conquests, just like he’s done a million times before. Nothing’s changed. The paradigm shift’s only in her head, but it feels irreversible. Like she’s made her bed and she has to lie in it, can’t go back, even if all of this is still here waiting for her. A clean break, she thinks. It has to be. In case—in case things go wrong. Because they could, Bella knows. Or doesn’t know, rather. She has no idea what she can really do, the full extent of the burning behind her eyes. Maybe she’ll flicker out quietly, maybe she’ll go down in magnificent flames. It’s terrifying, when she lets herself think about it. But she’ll be far enough away that she won’t hurt any of them. 

Her mom falls asleep before the end of the movie, just slumps over until she’s curled up in the corner of the couch. She looks impossibly small in sleep, swimming in the sweater and sweatpants she’s got on, even though it’s August in LA. Bella leaves the TV on, just turns the volume down and lets herself sink further into the couch cushions while the screen bathes everything in the cool blue light of infomercials. 

-

She takes Dad’s private plane. One of Dad’s private planes, she corrects herself. A farewell to her life as she knows it, of sorts. Of the immediacy of it all, the having things before she even realizes she wants them. The last text she has from Gigi is from about two weeks ago, when they were planning on lunch. She hasn’t responded to the picture Bella sent her the week before, not that Bella expected her to. She doesn’t let herself feel bad about it. Instead, she deletes their conversation, and doesn’t pause to let herself think about how many years she’s just erased, even though the last few have been halfhearted at best. 

It’s not a long flight, LA to New Orleans, and she spends it flicking through the copies of Vogue that are on the plane. She shouldn’t be surprised when she sees her own face staring back at her, but it takes a second for Bella to recognize herself. She’s spent a disproportionate amount of time looking at herself, and thinking about how she looks, because it just comes with the territory. But there’s a split second of dissociation when she sees herself now, and she has to work to wrap her head around the fact that she’s looking at herself, all long legs and wisps of fabric and eyes that are trying to burn right up off the page. 

She tears the page out and tucks it away. As a memento, kind of. A reminder of what she looks like to everyone else.

-

Airports always feel nebulous and otherworldly, like the gateway to somewhere else, rather than their own space. Bella’s been here before, but not enough that it feels familiar. It’s all buzzing y’alls and men in suits legging it to the gate, middle aged women with perfectly coiffed blonde hair looking down their noses at kids running rampant. Bella slides her sunglasses off and tucks them away, keeps her head down as she pushes her way towards the exit, handle of the suitcase sweaty in her hand. 

There’s a heaviness to the air that’s absent in LA. It feels like its own entity, swirling around her and threatening to overtake her, pushing down like it’s testing her, waiting for her reaction. Wondering if it can swallow her up right off the sidewalk. Bella pushes back. Straightens her shoulders and wipes the sweat off of her forehead. Shakes out her hair, humidity be damned, and slides her sunglasses back up her nose. 

Getting a cab takes longer than she expects. Everyone has somewhere to be, even in the slow south, as it turns out. Bella’s not used to this part, trying to get someone’s attention. In LA, it comes even when she doesn’t want it. Especially then, maybe. But here, it takes her a good ten minutes to flag someone down, and when she does, the driver looks at her funny, opens his mouth like he’s seen her before. He has, probably. He might be able to place her, he might not, but she didn’t come here for this. 

He takes the suitcase out of her hands, and Bella feels self conscious for a second, knows the handle is slick with sweat from her palm. He tosses her two bags in the trunk, and doesn’t go to open his mouth until he’s got the trunk shut. She has no way of knowing what he’s going to say, doesn’t think that’s in her wheelhouse, even though stranger things have happened.

It’s like a reflex, even after years of suppressing it. Her eyes feel hot at first, not unlike they do when she’s trying not to cry, but it spreads from there until that hum’s in her veins and her lips curl up into that secret smile, easy as breathing, and she knows exactly what she looks like, even though it’s been years. It’s like flexing a long dormant muscle, one she’d almost forgotten about, but it works. His eyes slide out of focus for a second then go all glassy, and an innocuous smile spreads across his face. 

“Where to?” he asks, and Bella can’t help the surge of _I did that, me, this is who I am, finally_ , that floods her body. She can feel his eyes on her as she fumbles through her phone for the address, but he doesn’t sigh impatiently or grumble at all, just waits, that same pleasant smile on his face until she finds it. There’s guilt on the tail end of all the adrenaline. Her mom’s words echoing in her head, going on about taking away people’s ability to make their own choices. Bella tries to focus on the radio the cab driver has on, anything to distract herself, but the uneasiness won’t fade, stays niggling at the back of her skull.

Nothing’s black and white, Bella knows. She watches the Superdome flash by as they speed down the freeway. She’s not sure if she feels guilty because she knows it’s wrong, deep down, or if it’s just so ingrained in her that she can’t shake it. She’s not out to get anyone, doesn’t want to just stomp through life always getting her way because of this. She can use it for something. She knows she can. She just needs the opportunity, has to get used to bringing it out slick and silent and only when necessary. It’s not like she’s going to use it for evil, jesus. Her mom used to look at her all worried, like she was a fault line ready to shake them all apart. 

“Here we are, miss.”

The driver’s voice snaps her out of her thoughts. She’s not sure how long the drive was, too wrapped up in her head to really pay attention, but they’re surrounded by weeping willows, mossy branches hanging low and heavy. It was sunny when they left the airport, but it seems darker now, even though it’s not nearly late enough for the sun to have set. 

The air feels different when she gets out of the cab. Not like a wall anymore, but like a blanket, almost. Draping itself over her, reminding her that it’s there but giving her limbs room to move. She slams the car door behind her and takes the suitcases from the driver when he digs them out of the trunk. She smiles at him sweet and slow, fights back the burn behind her eyes and tips him extra.

“Thanks so much,” she says, pressing the money into his hand, and she means it, hopes he can see it in her face. He gives her a half smile and then he’s gone in a cloud of exhaust that smells just like LA. 

The house is perfect in person, even more than it was in photographs. It’s what her secret little girl dreams were made of, when she still kept those journals in purple pen, detailing all the ways her body hummed and filled up rooms and rooms with what she could do. It’s all mossy corners and windows taller than she is and black shutters and this feeling that it’s alive, breathing in heavy in the heat just like she is. It’s not welcoming, necessarily. It’s stately and looming and defiant, standing tall under the weight of the air, daring anyone to look at it the wrong way, and Bella loves it, feels more at home just looking at it than she ever did in LA. 

She lets the moment sit. Just her and her two suitcases, staring up at the front door, black paint chipped and perfect. She trips a little going up the steps of the front porch, floorboards warped with age and humidity. The key’s shiny and new when she digs it out of her pocket, a sharp contrast to the slight tarnish of the house as a whole. 

The furniture inside is painfully modern, smacks of her dad, well meaning but ultimately removed and unaware. It’s okay. She wants to make it hers, anyway. Wants to seek out all the hole in the wall antique stores she can find, where she isn’t anyone, where she can relax and let all the energy she’s been keeping under wraps flow out and push back against the air. 

It’s a bit stuffy, like it hasn’t been aired out in years, and the grand staircase is worn and creaks under her feet, flip flops loud against the wooden floors. Her steps echo through the house, and Bella knows it’s too big and too empty for her. She thinks about filling it up, with odd furniture that other people have discarded. And, maybe, with people like her, who’ve spent so much time pretending to be someone else that they almost forgot who they really were and what they were capable of. 

Space is good, though in this moment. She needs it. Needs to be able to inhale without someone looking at her and giving her pointers on breathing. 

The door to what she assumes is the master bedroom creaks when she pushes it open, and for a second she thinks about hunting down a can of WD40 to smooth it out, but she stops herself, doesn’t want to silence this house. She wants to feel it out, listen to what it has to say to her, like it really is alive. Her mom would laugh at her, and Gigi would probably just roll her eyes like she does at everything these days, but it feels right, letting things go. Just listening, not trying to whittle everything into perfection. 

-

She walks to the grocery store. Something else she isn’t used to, let alone the narrow sidewalk and hanging plants everywhere and the way it rains what feels like every five minutes. Bella can count the number of times it rained in LA in the last year on one hand, but it rains at least that many times on her way to and from the store. She gets enough to stock the kitchen for a few days, the plastic bags cutting into her palms on the walk back. It would’ve been easy to get help. To blink, let the heat rush to her eyes, to smile just right, and get the check out boy to walk her home. 

That’s not what this is for, though. Not what this is about. Bella tries to tell herself it’s not a reaction to the guilt she felt earlier, after the cab driver. The last thing she wants is to prove her mom right. That she robs people of their decisions, dictates their next move. That’s not her. So she walks home alone, and by the time she climbed the steps of the front porch, she’s drenched in sweat, her black t-shirt not helping in the slightest. 

The house only has window unit air conditioners, and she thinks for a second about emailing her dad about getting central air put in, but decides against it. This is a new life, sweat and shitty air conditioning and creaky doors and all. Not what she had, which was stifling but comfortable in its own way. This is different. Her becoming, she thinks, putting the bags down on the kitchen table with a grunt. The blast of cool air from the refrigerator when she opens the door makes her want to climb inside of it, it’s that hot. 

She eats Reese’s Puffs with coconut milk for dinner, spreads out all her old journals on the couch and pours over them, presses her fingers against the page like the ink will still smear if she pushes hard enough. It doesn’t, long set in the paper. Some days she pressed down so hard with her pen that she tore through the page. Those were the bad days. The days she thought she could tear out that part of herself, put it down on paper and leave it there. The latest ones are the hardest to read. She can taste all the desperate sadness, feels the cold sweat and the phantom tears on her cheeks. It takes half a box of cereal to get through them, and Bella hates herself a little for it, that reflex that’s impossible to kick. 

It’s hard sleeping that night. Bella stares up at the mosquito netting draped around her too big bed. She stretches out, marvels at the fact that her long limbs don’t drape over the sides, even extended as far as she can. The sheets are smooth beneath her skin, and she lets the heat weigh heavy on her, the air conditioner laboring loudly against it. She can’t help but think about Gigi and the radio silence after those photos came out. She remembers when they were kids, holing up in Gigi’s closet, trying to practice on each other and realizing it didn’t work, and the way they laughed with frustration instead of cried. 

The first time she ever swayed something in front of her mother still makes her break out in a cold sweat. It was just a fitting room attendant, close to prom season. The line was long, and she remembers the biting, hollow feeling in her stomach. They were all tired of standing there waiting, too many people still ahead of them after twenty minutes. It was easy to make eye contact. To feel that familiar heat and the endorphins rushing through her body when he blinked and beckoned her to the front. Bella remembers the fight when they got home like it’s just happened, the way her mom’s face went all red and she didn’t say much. Didn’t have to. Just looked at her with fear and disappointment and too many things Bella didn’t know how to deal with written all over the downward curve of her mouth. 

Gigi was never like that. It always seemed comparatively easy for her, Bella thinks. She rolls over on her stomach and closes her eyes, tries to focus on the cool of the pillow on her cheek and the buzz of the air conditioner, drowning out the creaks and groans of the house settling. It always felt like a competition that started before she even knew what that meant, strangers and friends alike gravitating towards Gigi’s face, round and bright and sunny, blinding everyone who looked at her and making them like it. Bella assumes it’s easy, at least. It’s not like they’ve talked about that or much else in the past few years. Gigi seems unbothered, though. Just floats through it, smiles at everyone she meets, but not like that. Bella doesn’t think, anyway. She wonders if there’s a breaking point for Gigi, or if the way she’s living is infinitely sustainable. Bella’s wanted things before, but never as much as she wanted that, the easy as breathing way Gigi floated through it all. 

She can’t remember falling asleep, but she’s sweating, sheets twisted around her waist when she wakes up, despite the air conditioner humming away in the window. Bella stretches out, pulls the sheets away from her body, feels at her ribs on instinct. They’re still there, bumps and grooves under her skin. She slots her fingers against them and pretends she can’t feel the pancakes and ice cream making them harder to find. It’s a bad habit, a security blanket that she can’t let go of, as much as she wants to. 

Showers always help. It always feels like she can wash it all away if she just stands under the spray long enough. It’s scary, the way the day stretches out in front of her. No obligations, nowhere to be. It’s what she wanted, but she doesn’t know what to do with it, isn’t sure what to do now that she’s not accountable to anyone. It all seemed simple when she was home, the need to get away making her want to jump out of her skin. 

Bella’s not sure how to exercise this kind of freedom when she’s never had it, and it’s scary how easy it is to waste the better part of the morning in bed in her underwear, trawling the internet for sites that specialize in historic New Orleans design. She eats the rest of the Reese’s Puffs right out of the box and swallows down the guilt that comes with them. Her hair’s still wet when she shuts her laptop, and it’s past noon, but she’s armed with a list of antique stores and clubs when she pulls on her tiniest crop top and jean shorts. She’d go out in LA like this, but normally it’d mean an hour in front of the mirror, getting her eyeliner and highlighter just right, making sure she doesn’t have a hair out of place. She’s not in LA anymore, though, and she snaps her eyes shut when she catches a glimpse of her reflection, forces herself to keep moving.

-

Money’s never been an object for her before, and even now it’s not, but Bella still feels a tug of guilt in her stomach, with that big house with too many rooms for one person at her fingertips. She slips into more antique shops than she can count, breathes in the dust of hundreds of years of history, but she doesn’t buy anything. She’s got nothing but time now, so she takes mental notes, brushes her fingers against the smooth wood of bed frames older than she is and ducks out before she can latch on to anything.

The sun’s fighting to peek out when she makes her way down Frenchmen Street, but the air is electric, like there’s a storm waiting to blanket the city. There are a million opportunities to take your clothes off in New Orleans, as it turned out. She’d picked through at least a dozen seedy Craigslist postings that morning, some on Bourbon Street, others a bit off the beaten path. She doesn’t go in anywhere, just observes, tries to walk down the sidewalk like she knows the streets like the back of her hand. She’s not sure if she's actually good at it or if no one cares, the few people she passes absorbed in themselves. There’s no one lying in wait anywhere for her. No cameras or tourists eager to get a glimpse of someone they’ve seen in a magazine. 

She’s clutching a Hurricane when her phone buzzes in her back pocket. It’s definitely not late enough for alcohol, but it’s as easy to drink underage here as it is in LA, apparently. She can feel it going all the way down when she takes a sip and digs her phone out of her back pocket. Her hand’s slick with sweat and she nearly drops it when she sees the text on the screen.

 _‘kim held at gunpoint. didn’t know if u’d heard,_ ’ Anwar’s text reads, and Bella stops in her tracks, fear cold in her stomach. It hits her in her chest and blindsides her for a second. Her hand’s shaking as she scrolls to Kendall’s name in her contacts, cursing under her breath. It rings out to voicemail, and she walks right into someone’s chest. She’s not really paying attention, sure, but it’s like he appeared of out thin air, and now he’s inches from her face, looking at her appraisingly.

“What the fuck,” she bites out, and his lips just curl up in a smile at the glare she shoots him.

“Sorry,” he drawls, his accent decidedly not southern. He doesn’t look very sorry, blinking slowly at her with a smile still on his face, curls frizzing around his shoulders. “Got a bad habit of, uh, bumping into people,” he finishes, fingers tangling in his hair.

Normally Bella would brush it off, smile back and apologize for not watching where she was going, but her body’s still on high alert, anxiety ricocheting through her veins.

“Maybe watch where you’re going next time, okay? And get a hair cut, you’re not Mick Jagger,” she says, deliberately brushing his shoulder as she starts walking again, directing her attention back at her phone and the way Kendall hasn’t responded. 

She can hear him laughing even as she hits Kendall’s name in her contacts with more force than strictly necessary. It’s loud and unrestrained and Bella can’t put space between them quickly enough. 

Kendall doesn’t pick up when she calls a second time, either. 

“Kenny. Call me back, okay? Just let me know everyone’s okay, or something. Please. Call me back, fuck.”

Bella makes it home in double time, legs shaking with exertion as she climbs the porch and fumbles the key out of her pocket. Still no response from Kendall. Nothing from Gigi or her mom, either, what the fuck. Bella knows she’s the one who left, but it didn’t mean she wanted to be kept completely out of the loop. She collapses onto the couch and tries calling Kendall again. More voicemail. She can feel her pulse beating in her throat, insistent and rapid fire against her skin. She gives herself ten minutes, drumming a beat against the hot skin of her thigh, legs sticking to the couch uncomfortably. 

Distracting herself isn’t easy. She responds to a few Craigslist posts, picking through the ones that seemed clean when she passed them earlier. It’s—probably not entirely safe. If her mom knew, she’d be on the next plane out, no question. Bella should be worried, probably. Pretty girl out on her own, going into clubs where men will come in just to watch her, who will want more than she’s willing to give. But this kind of freedom is what she wanted, and it’s breathtaking and terrifying and necessary all at once. 

It’s been over an hour and Kendall hasn’t responded. Logically, Bella knows that everything’s probably a shit show, that she doesn’t have time to call back everyone who’s undoubtedly contacted her. It still stings, a little, and she wonders if she should’ve just let it be. But they’ve been friends for years, closer than Bella’s been with Gigi in a long time. One text. It’s not too much, or overstepping, probably. It’s fine.

 _‘you ok?? kim ok??’_ she fires off before she can talk herself out of it. She stares at the screen for a few seconds and waits for the gray dots to appear. After a few seconds, they don’t, so Bella tosses her phone aside. Her appetite’s gone, and she tries to ignore the quiet voice in her had that celebrates this, fights the reflex to press against the jut of her hip bones when she’s taking her second shower of the day. She watches the water pour over her body, the concave curve of her stomach comforting and familiar. 

Kendall’s texted her back by the time she gets out of the shower, and Bella hastens to wipe the steam from the screen of her phone. 

_‘fuck this city,’_ Kendall’s replied, followed immediately by, _‘think it’s time to get away, you know?’_

Relief floods Bella’s body, and she sinks to the floor, towel wrapped tightly around her body. Her hair keeps dripping on the screen, making it hard to read when Kendall’s next message pops up.

 _‘ha, i mean, i know you know.’_

Bella pauses for a second, thumbs poised over the screen. She and Kendall are different on the surface, sure, but they’re the same deep down. Kendall wears who she is like a crown, sweet smiles and bubbly lighter and cool girl style that she makes no effort to hide. She doesn’t need to run like Bella. She’s not surrounded by reminders to tone herself down, or a mother telling her she can’t, shouldn’t, won’t under her roof. But maybe. Maybe she needs something Bella can give her. 

_‘come live with me,’_ she sends before she can think better of it. She pulls up the first picture of the house her dad sent her and sends that off, too, captions it, _‘be spooky with me.’_

It’s lame, sure. Maybe it makes her seem desperate, or weird, or whatever, but Bella tries not to let herself think about it. When Kendall doesn’t respond after that, she tries not to let it burrow under her skin. She digs the bottle of Xanax that she lifted from her mom’s bathroom cabinet out of the bottom of her suitcase. It’s probably not a good sign that she’s leaning on it already, but she just needs to get to tomorrow. A new day, clean slate, all that. 

-

Kendall doesn’t respond, but she shows up on Bella’s doorstep the next morning, hair still stick straight despite the humidity, cat eye sunglasses firmly in place. There’s a tired slope to her shoulders, but she’s painfully familiar, sharp angles and tanned skin. Legs that Bella’s always been secretly jealous of, impossibly short shorts and no shirt, just a bra that leaves nothing to the imagination. Her nipple piercing winks at Bella through the sheer fabric right before Kendall drops her bags on the worn wood of the porch and pulls her into a hug. 

She smells like airplane and smog, LA wrapped up in a person, and Bella inhales deep and pulls her closer, sticky skin on sticky skin. 

“Hi,” Kendall whispers against Bella’s neck. She presses her lips against Bella’s skin, lip gloss tacky, and Bella shivers and tightens her arms around Kendall’s tiny waist. 

“Hey,” Bella whispers back, and she wants to crawl inside Kendall for a second, hide behind how much stronger she’s always been. When she left LA, she didn’t think about the extent to which she was leaving everything, everyone, behind. It was easy in the short term, the needing to get out. Bella just didn’t realize how terrifying being alone was until she wasn’t anymore. 

“Know it’s early, but can we nap?”

Kendall’s breath is hot against her skin, and Bella forces herself to pull back. Kendall slides her sunglasses up into her hair. The circles under her eyes are darker than Bella’s ever seen them, and she just nods, grabs Kendall’s wrist and pulls her inside.

It’s still sticky inside, the air conditioner fighting against the humidity, but Kendall doesn’t seem to care, just lets herself fall face down onto the couch, her bags left in the doorway. 

“Come on,” Kendall mumbles into the couch, hair spilling over the cushions. She pats the space next to her, eyes closed. 

Bella hesitates for a second. She’s not really that tired, and the thought of curling up on the couch next to Kendall like she used to makes her anxious, like it’s not a thing they should do anymore because they’re not sixteen. She caves when Kendall groans, though. It’s too hot for this, really, Bella feels like she’s going to sweat right out of her skin. The thin skin of Kendall’s eyelids looks bruised up close, and she fights the urge to brush her fingers across them, like she can wipe away all the stress with a single touch. 

Bella knows she can’t, though, so she keeps her hands to herself, stretches out as much as she can and tries to maintain the millimeters of space between them, for whatever it’s worth.


	2. I could wait around for the dust to still//Kendall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "We will be monsters, alone in the world, but we will have each other." - Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
> 
> (Or, witches in New Orleans taking no shit, ft. sirens, time traveling, invisibility, and polyamory.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hiii, sorry for the wait. Work happened, then the election happened, and now here we are. Again, please heed all the warnings this is tagged with/let me know if there's something I missed! I'm still nervous, this is still like my child, and thank you endlessly everyone who had kind things to say about part 1! Thanks to [ritasfault](http://ritasfault.tumblr.com) for listening to me whine about this constantly AND making beautiful, perfect art that you can see [here](http://polaroidgirlfriend.tumblr.com/post/152974037976/take-your-silver-spoon-dig-your-grave-2-we). Thank you [Mary](http://mhmmwhatchasay.tumblr.com) for betaing this for me/teaching me how to use semicolons, and [littlecather](http://archiveofourown.org/users/littlecather/pseuds/littlecather) for looking over part one and being generally supportive. All remaining mistakes are mine, chapter title from Hurricane by The Hush Sound, please don't let the real people that this is about see it, etc.

It takes Kim being held up in her car in West Hollywood for Kendall to want to leave. LA always felt like a second skin, something she wasn’t herself without. It fit her like a favorite sweater, made room for her as she grew up, and never lost its shape. It’s warm outside, a perfect 80 and sunny, but nothing about it holds the allure that it did before. She’s paralyzed, holes herself up in the house she was excited about just yesterday. It feels like a target now. 

She’s gone through half a bag of hot cheetos in the past half an hour, and she’ll hate herself later, her mouth already burning, but they’re like a security blanket. Something Kendall always reaches for when she’s feeling homesick, or when she comes home after being gone for too long. 

If she focuses hard enough on the burn of her mouth, she can almost forget how everything’s changed. She didn’t even realize that what she was a—deviation, or whatever. It was always natural; easy like breathing. It’s not like she went out of her way to, like, manipulate people, she just. Nudged them. Kept them back when she needed space and pulled them closer when she was lonely. She was more careful once her mom clued her in, honed it as she grew up. She loved LA, but she loved it because she could push back. Against the people and the cameras and the way it felt like everyone wanted all of her, sometimes. It doesn’t feel like that, not anymore. Kendall isn’t sure if Kim was too scared to push back, or if she finally found someone who wasn’t impacted by it, but the why didn’t really change the fact that it made Kendall realize she wasn’t invincible. 

Twenty four hours ago, it was a shield. Kendall didn’t realize it until it now, not really, and she misses the way she felt all those years, like no one could touch her. Like being what she was was a barrier between her and everyone else. She wonders if this is what everyone else feels like. Relatively powerless in the face of other people’s actions. 

Curled up on her couch, she feels totally alone despite the fact that pretty much everyone she’s ever spoken to is blowing up her phone. She doesn’t have the energy to respond to even half of it, but when she sees Bella’s name, it trips her up. Kendall knows she up and left, went to New Orleans of all places. She’d tried to keep a neutral face when Gigi told her, figured there was more to the story than she was getting, but she didn’t press. For a second, she feels guilty that they’d drifted apart enough in the last few years that she had no idea how bad it was for Bella. 

They were attached at the hip at the beginning; stumbling in front of cameras and smiling a little too much for the world of high fashion. Bella was shy and quiet at first, but Kendall knew what she was. She’s not sure if it’s part of what she can do or not, or if she’s just good at reading people, but it was clear right away, even if Bella was never obvious about it. Kendall let it go, though. She figured there was a reason Bella was keeping it to herself, that she’d share when—if—she was ready.

It came months later, when Kendall had stopped waiting for it. Bella stuttered out her secret in the middle of the night, curled up next to Kendall in her too small twin bed, like it was the first time she’d ever told anyone. Kendall didn’t ask if it was the first time, but she’d wanted to. She’d almost asked a million times in the years that followed. She remembers laughing out loud and the confused look on Bella’s face, then the pure relief when she explained that she’d known all along. Kendall feels a little sick. It might be from the cheetos, but it might also be from the realization that she’s not the first person Bella tells things anymore.  
She could call her back. Should call her back, answer the voicemail Bella left, begging to know if everything was okay. But it’s been so long since they shared things that answering now feels impossible, so she sits on it. 

She sits on it, watches texts roll in. Replies to some of them. Checks in with her family, finishes the bag of cheetos, cleans her kitchen even though she hasn’t used it in a month, thinks about never leaving her house again. 

Her couch is spotless, lines from the vacuum cleaner visible on each cushion, when she finally replies, her mouth still smarting from the fucking cheetos. 

_‘fuck this city,’_ she fires off, letting all the fear and anger bubble up in her veins. _‘think it’s time to get away, you know?’_ she types out before she even thinks it through. Leaving LA wasn’t ever something she thought she’d do. Half the time, Kendall forgets the rest of the world even exists. Bella didn’t, though. Things were bad enough for her to leave without a backwards glance. When Kendall heard, she didn’t get it, but it’s different now. LA feels more like a vice than a virtue.

_‘ha, i mean, i know you know.’_

Kendall doesn’t expect a response right away, figures Bella’s got bigger things on her plate, with moving halfway across the country and all. Still, when she checks her phone a few minutes later, Bella’s name lights up the screen, and it gives Kendall a flutter deep in her stomach.

 _‘come live with me,’_ then, _‘be spooky with me,’_ and a photo of a house straight out of American Horror Story, but a little less shiny.

It makes it real in a way it wasn’t before. Objectively, factually speaking, Kendall knew Bella moved, that she didn’t live fifteen minutes away anymore, but this cements it. A picture of her new life, a few thousand miles away from Kendall. 

It’s terrifying in its own way, the thought of leaving behind the future she had all planned out, and the city that defined her in a lot of ways. Kendall feels like she’s caught between a rock and a hard place. It doesn’t have to be permanent, or forever, she reasons with herself, phone warm in her hands as she paces the living room. She doesn’t want to sit on the couch now that it’s vacuumed, the clean lines too perfect to disrupt. 

She doesn’t sleep that night. She stares up at the ceiling, eyes wide and burning in the dark. The clean white lines of her bedroom are still a blank slate, just waiting for her to make her mark. Put down her own roots in the city she’s loved her whole life. The last time she was in this bed, her legs were draped over a boy’s shoulders, long and coltish, her hands fisted in the sheets, hips arching up off the bed. Kendall blushes at the memory, even though she’s an adult, okay, and it’s her house and sex isn’t something she’s ever been embarrassed by, not really. Not with a million older sisters and a mom who always felt more like a manager than anything else. That made her feel like more of a grown up than anything, having someone in her bed at three in the afternoon. Kicking him out and washing the sheets after. They still smell clean, even though she hasn’t been home in a month. 

She texts Mohamed at three in the morning, and by the time the sun’s up, she has Bella’s address in her phone. Kendall knows he’s always had a soft spot for her, knows that he’s hiding who he is, too. He’s better at it than Bella, carries himself easily, walks into every room like it’s already his, but Kendall always knows. It’s like—an aura. Faint, sure, but unmistakeable. She wonders if he and Bella have ever talked about it. Kendall figures she probably hasn’t, with the way she keeps it locked down at all times. Wonders what Bella would be like if she hadn’t spent so much time trying to fall in line. 

The plane ride is just long enough for Kendall to fall into a sleep deep enough that she’s totally disoriented and more tired than she was when she boarded in LA. She stumbles through the airport, the reality of what she’s done settling against her skin with the humidity. It’s easy to tell her mom and dad and sisters that she needs to get out. Get gone, even if it’s not forever, and New Orleans is the last place anyone would look for her. Her mom didn’t put up much of a fight, after everything. All it took was a quiet, a soft ‘just need to get a way for a little while,’ sitting at the counter in mom’s impeccable kitchen. 

She takes a cab from the airport, doesn’t even bother to tilt her head at the driver the right way, just pushes back her hair and leaves her sunglasses on. She almost falls asleep again on the drive. Bella’s house is stately and beautiful in a way that’s almost unapproachable, not unlike Bella herself, Kendall thinks. She stumbles on her feet a little when she gets out of the car. It feels like being on the runway for the first time all over again. Blinded by what she’s done, tripping under the weight of it all. New Orleans smells different, Kendall thinks, dragging her bags up the steps of the front porch. The wood creaks ominously under her feet. Swampy, kind of. Less like exhaust and desperation, more like—foliage, maybe. 

She’s grateful for the fact that she has as little clothing on as is socially acceptable, the heat wrapping her up, pressing in on her like Los Angeles never did, even during heat waves. There’s sweat gathering at the nape of her neck and all along her hairline, and Kendall’s acutely aware of the fact that she smells like airplane and someone who maybe needs a shower, but it’s just Bella. Bella who’s woken up drooling on her shoulder a million times, Bella who trusted Kendall with her big secret, but also Bella who left without a backward glance.

It might be a mistake, all of this. Running instead of standing her ground. But it’s easier to raise her hand and knock on Bella’s door, paint flaking at the corners, than it is to bury herself in her couch back in LA. 

Bella opens the door a second later, and seeing her is like a punch to the stomach. Worn t-shirt and tired eyes, too skinny but impossibly bright in a way Kendall’s never seen before. She lets her bags slip from her hands and pulls Bella into a hug, buries her face in her neck and revels in the feeling of Bella’s arms around her waist, bare skin on bare skin. She smells just like Kendall remembers; like clean girl and that Herbal Essences shampoo that comes in the pink bottle. 

“Hi,” she whispers against Bella’s neck, and hi isn’t enough, she knows. It doesn’t say _thank you,_ doesn’t say _I’m sorry_ and _I missed you_ and _it feels like I let you down._ But maybe Bella hears those things anyway, because she tightens her grip, digs her fingers into Kendall’s skin like she’s a lifeline. 

“Hey,” Bella says back, her voice low. Kendall can feel her throat vibrating when she talks, and she’d fall asleep right here if she thought she could get away with it. 

“Know it’s early, but can we nap?” 

Kendall can’t make herself move, just stands there with her chin resting on Bella’s shoulder, feeling the way her body heat seeps through the fabric of her t-shirt. Bella pulls back after a minute and lets her hands drop from Kendall’s waist. She misses it right away, the firm, almost desperate, pressure of Bella’s hands. She wonders absently if Bella pressed hard enough to leave a mark. 

It’s hot inside, even though Kendall can hear the air conditioning slogging away. She zeroes in on the couch, can’t make herself pause long enough to focus on anything else, just drops her bags at the stairs and drops face first into the cushions. She’s the kind of tired that makes everything feel impossible, even breathing, but she rolls over enough so that there’s space beside her and pats it clumsily.

“Come on,” she mumbles into the couch. She can’t make herself open her eyes, but she feels the cushions sink under Bella’s weight a few seconds later. Tentative at first, then steady, a rush of her shampoo flooding Kendall’s nose. For a few seconds, Bella doesn’t move. Just sits, lets all the tiny noises the house is making settle around them. Kendall feels her shift after a second, and the couch dips again as she settles in next to her. They aren’t touching, but they’re so close that Kendall can feel the heat radiating off of Bella’s skin, compounding the already sticky air. 

-

Their legs are tangled together when Kendall wakes up. She blinks slowly until Bella’s face comes back into focus. She looks impossibly young when she’s asleep, everything about her softer and more open, somehow. Free from the weight of pretending to be someone else, Kendall guesses. She sits up carefully and pulls her legs up to her chest, reveling in the cool air against her skin. The living room’s bathed in that gray light that comes with early mornings, and Kendall can’t really believe that they slept that long, hadn’t fully realized just how tired she was.

Bella’s still asleep next to her, stretched out on her side, legs long and tan. Kendall clenches her hands, doesn’t let herself reach out and comb her fingers through Bella’s hair. She feels fiercely protective looking down at her, wispy hair and skinny arms, hands tucked under her cheek.

Kendall forces herself to get up, climbs carefully over Bella’s sleeping form before she does something stupid like curl back up next to her. She pads over to her bags, feet sticking slightly to the floor with each step. She sits on the bottom one and digs out her phone, scrolling past the long list of messages and missed calls, checks in with her mom, then lets the screen fade to black.

The house is full of soft noises—stairs creaking quietly under her weight, the hum of the air conditioning, the faint chirp of birds outside, branches scraping the windows. All a departure from the sometimes oppressive silence of her place in LA, with its double paned windows and sound proofed walls. It’s different, and it makes Kendall feel not alone in a comforting way, like all of these things are wrapping her up and secreting her away from the outside. 

Her neck cracks, deep and faintly alarming when she stands and stretches. It feels good, a release of pressure she didn’t realize was weighing on her. She groans faintly when she reaches down to pick up her bags, heaves them over her shoulder as she makes her way up the stairs. She pauses when she gets to the top and listens for any sign of Bella stirring, but there’s nothing but background noise. It takes her a minute to find the bathroom. She peeks into bedrooms that have clearly been empty for a long time, furnished with furniture that’s too modern for its surroundings, smacking of the WeHo cool Kendall left behind. The bathroom’s like something out of the old south, though, or at least how Kendall pictures it. The clawfoot tub gray with age, black and white tile that’s chipped in more than a few places, and a mirror that’s a little spotty, adding to the imperfections on her skin. Kendall winces at how greasy her chin looks and the spot that’s red and angry at the corner of her jaw. 

She turns on the shower and strips out of her clothes. The pipes whine, high pitched, and for a second Kendall worries that she’s broken the plumbing. It slows after a minute, the water heating up and filling the bathroom with steam. 

The hot shower feels good, even though she knows she’ll be sweating again the second she steps out of it. She scrubs at her face, washes away all the sweat and stale airplane air, and steals some of Bella’s shampoo. It still feels strange, all of it. That she’s ended up here, of all places. Away from home in a way that’s more permanent than it’s ever been before. 

Bella’s still sleeping when Kendall makes her way back downstairs, finger combing her hair and twisting it into a bun. Her stomach feels totally hollow, the candy bar she ate on the plane long gone. She can feel the growl as she walks into the kitchen and flicks on the light, the room still dim in the early morning. There’s not much in, the cabinets kind of dusty and depressingly empty. She manages to scrape pancakes together though, knows they’re Bella’s favorite, and figures it’s the least she can do. 

She has a plate piled high, one of her better efforts really, when Bella makes her way into the kitchen. Her face is puffy with sleep and her hair’s wet from the shower she must’ve taken while Kendall was digging around in the cabinets for a frying pan. It knocks the wind out of her a little, Bella’s slow smile and the wet spots on her shoulders from her hair. The way she looks at home. 

“You made pancakes,” Bella says after a minute, voice still rough. Kendall wonders if she’s quit smoking now that she’s gotten out of LA, or if it’s a habit she hasn’t been able to break yet.

“Kind of the least I could do after crashing your house,” she says after a second. “And we can eat whatever now, so we might as well take advantage of it, right?”

Bella huffs out a laugh and rolls her eyes at the ceiling, but she pulls the plate towards her and inhales deeply.

“Please tell me I remembered to buy syrup,” she says, eyes widening in panic.

“Like I’d even start to make them if I knew you didn’t have it, please.”

“Go halfsies?”

Kendall’s hit with the memory of freshman year of high school when she says it. They’d go out for waffles every Friday after school, just to reward themselves for getting through the week. They split a chocolate chip belgian waffle every time, even though there were a million other options on the menu. 

“Course,” she says, hopping up on the counter and patting the spot next to her. Bella digs around for silverware and passes her a fork before pulling herself up next to her.

They eat the whole stack, all five pancakes, thighs pressed together, the kitchen counter cool under Kendall’s skin. It’s achingly domestic in a way she never pictured. The future always seemed far off, complete with some tall, faceless stranger making her breakfast in the morning. Maybe a baby sleeping down the hall. A big house in Malibu and the world at her fingertips. This is miles from that. 

“How’d we even end up here? Like, who’d’ve thought we’d leave LA. Or live together, even,” Kendall says, running her finger through the syrup that’s pooled in the middle of the plate.

“Think I always knew I’d leave someday,” Bella says, leaning back against the cabinets and resting her hands on her stomach. “I don’t think it ever fit me like it fit you, you know?”

Kendall’s quiet for a minute. It’s not like she didn’t know it was hard for Bella, but she always thought Bella would just. Be there whenever she needed her, right around the corner, patient and always willing to listen. It’s jarring, knowing now that Bella was always going to leave, that Kendall wasn’t in her forever plans.

“I’m sorry,” Kendall blurts out before she even thinks. The look Bella gives her is startled, like it was the last thing she thought would come out of Kendall’s mouth. 

“I am. Really. Sorry, I mean,” she says, quieter this time. “I’m sorry that I wasn’t there.”

Bella’s shaking her head before Kendall even gets all the words out.

“I didn’t want anyone to know, Kenny, it’s fine. Really. It was just—everything, and Gigi, in the end, and I just couldn’t pretend I was happy anymore.”

Kendall shuts her eyes and lets her hand fall onto Bella’s thigh. She’s warm, and Kendall’s hand is a little sticky from syrup, but Bella doesn’t move, and Kendall relaxes into it. 

“What happened with G?” she asks. They’re friends, maybe even best friends, if a little superficial. They don’t talk about their respective relationships with Bella, though, like it’s some kind of unspoken line they can’t cross. 

Bella heaves out a sigh at that, and tips her head onto Kendall’s shoulder. She smells like sugar and flowery shampoo and Kendall would bottle it up if she could, hold onto it for when she’s sad.

“She stood me up. Again. I mean, it was just lunch, but. God, this is gonna sound dumb, okay, don’t judge me.”

“No judgment zone, come on, how long ago did we establish this? The first time I irreparably fucked up my eyebrows, right?”

Bella laughs quietly and leans further into her. 

“Not even close to my level, but I googled her? Just to like, see. I was killing time and the waiter was staring me down with his face—”

“Staring with his face, right—”

“Shut up, you know what I mean, all ‘I feel sorry for you because you clearly got stood up,’ but anyway, she was in New York with Z. Across the country, like she didn’t even remember to tell me she wasn’t going to be in town.”

Kendall focuses on the damp of Bella’s hair on her shoulder and the smooth skin of her leg under Kendall’s palm. 

“That’s shitty.”

She doesn’t know what else to say. It is shitty, and it’s hard, because Gigi’s her friend too, and they’ve experienced so many big work things together, but it’s easy for Kendall to forget that she and Bella are sisters, that their relationship is a special kind of minefield. 

“It sounds petty saying it out loud, it was just. The final straw more than anything, I think. It’s not spite? More like realizing that LA didn’t have a place for me?”

Kendall digs her fingers into Bella’s thigh and rests her head on Bella’s and wishes she knew what to say. She wishes she felt less guilty. 

“Sorry,” Kendall whispers into Bella’s hair, and Bella shifts under her, Kendall’s hand slipping off her leg. 

“Don’t have anything to be sorry for, Ken. You’re here now, don’t see anyone else doing that.”

Kendall tries to swallow down the guilt, the fact that she has her own reasons for being here that don’t have anything to do with Bella. She missed her, though, even if she didn’t realize it when she was in LA, when Bella was within reach. 

“If you leave me, I’m coming with you, remember?” Kendall says, and she remembers, even if Bella’s forgotten, scribbling it in eyeliner inside the cover of Bella’s algebra textbook in high school after a sleepless night spent studying, punch drunk with exhaustion and the sinking realization that they were both going to fail. 

“Course I do. I have an interview for this dancing thing today, too, so I have to try and make myself look pretty.”

“Dancing? Like the exotic kind?”

Bella straightens up and hits her shoulder. 

“I mean. Not strictly speaking, but it’s go-go level, so whatever.”

Kendall throws her head back and laughs, hitting it on the cabinets in the process.  
“You deserved that,” Bella says, sliding off the counter and grabbing Kendall’s hand. “Help me do my makeup. Tell me I’m pretty. Best friend duties are calling you.”

She ends up watching, mostly. Bella’s always been better at dramatic makeup, anyway, so Kendall sits on the toilet and watches the careful way she puts her mascara on, mouth wide open and lips bright red. The glitter from her eyelids falls onto her cheeks, and Kendall stops her before she can brush it away.

“Don’t,” she lunges forward to catch Bella’s wrist, “Leave it. It looks right. Not that you have anything to worry about, anyway. No one can resist you. Unless you want them to, anyway.”

Bella straightens her shoulders and tilts her head. Looks at herself from every angle in the mirror. Kendall can’t read minds, and she’s never really wanted to, but in this moment she’s dying to know what’s going through Bella’s head. If she’s nervous, or scared, or hesitant to be herself to the fullest, in a way.

“Mmm,” Bella hums, flicking her hair over her shoulder. It’s straight despite the humidity, long and falling down her back, and Kendall gets caught up in it, the way it shines in the light and falls away from the sharpness of Bella’s cheekbones. 

“I just—” Bella stops, “Like, my whole life I’ve pretended it wasn’t a thing, and now that it can be I just don’t. Don’t know?”

“Bells,” Kendall says, tugging on her wrist again, “This is part of who you are, okay? It’s not everything, but it’s important. And it’s yours.”

“Right. Right. It’s gonna be fine.”

Kendall lets her arm go and misses the contact immediately. 

“Can I come?” she asks, wrapping her arms around her legs and resting her chin on her knees. She feels like a little kid, begging to tag along on one of Kim or Khloe’s adventures for a second.

“You’re always coming with me, right?”

-

It’s wild, watching Bella walk into a room and own it immediately. Kendall’s spent years watching Bella watch everyone else, happy to fade into the background. Bella’s an entirely different person, tall and slight and everything about her commands attention. Kendall’s not used to being in the background, not when she’s with Bella, but it feels right. This is what she was looking for, after all. Coming here. Learning how to blend in, fall out of sight. 

“Kenny,” Bella calls out, and it breaks Kendall out of her thoughts. Bella’s twisted around in her seat. The owner’s office is pretty jumbled, but it smells clean like Lysol and there aren’t any red flags, not really. She suspects Bella picked it because the owner’s a woman. She looks too young and pretty for this kind of thing, but Kendall thinks the same could be said about her and Bella, so. 

“Sorry, yeah? What’s up? Are you good?”

Kendall stands up, stretching out the kinks in her back left from sleeping on the couch. 

“What do you think about being my partner in crime? Just for old times’ sake?”

Kendall can’t quite read the expression on Bella’s face, and guilt hits her again, because she used to know Bella like the back of her hand, could see right past the blank expressions that confounded everyone else.

“What do you have in mind?” Kendall asks, settling into the chair next to Bella. 

-

Twenty four hours after landing in New Orleans, Kendall has a job. A nail in the coffin of making this city more permanent than not, she thinks. Part of her wants to pick back up and run again, but it’s not the same kind of fear that’s waiting for her in LA. It’s more like the unknown, even with Bella next to her, tall and smiling and very present, hair starting to curl in the heat. 

“I can’t fucking believe we just did that,” Kendall says, lengthening her strides to catch up to where Bella’s a foot ahead of her. 

“Walked in there like it was already ours? I mean. You’re pretty good at that already. I’m just getting started but it’s like. I forgot what that felt like, you know?”

Kendall glances over at Bella. There’s a flush high on her cheeks and a smile still tugging at the corners of her mouth like she can’t quite believe they did it either. 

“You’re a natural. I would know. I grew up with them, so. Know it when I see it, and you’re it.”

She bumps Bella’s shoulder with her own and settles into the quiet, can’t stop looking up and all around her at how different everything is. Brick sidewalks that make her trip more than she’s used to, and everything’s so green and sunken, like it’s been there forever and doesn’t have any intention of moving. It’s permanent in ways that LA isn’t, Kendall thinks. Nothing’s slick or shiny or uncertain.

“Think we should do Cafe du Monde,” she says, when she spies the awnings her peripheral.

Bella groans next to her. 

“We gotta slow down on the carbs, I feel like all I’ve eaten is pancakes for the past week, literally,” Bella says, but she lets herself be dragged when Kendall grabs her wrist and strides purposely towards it. 

“We’ll sweat it all off, it’s fine, come on, we’re still practically tourists, so I’m pretty sure this is a requirement.”

“A rite of passage, I guess,” Bella says, and she’s caved, Kendall can tell. Bella’s wrist feels tiny and breakable between her fingers, and Kendall loosens her grip, lets the smell of fried dough and chicory coffee wash over them. 

-

It’s the cockroach in the shower that does it, ultimately. Kendall’s worried for a second that she’s done real damage to her throat, because it burns when she screams. She can’t seem to make herself stop, though, or get herself out fast enough.

“I know it’s not my house but I’m about two seconds away from burning it all down, Bella, I swear to fucking god,” she yells from the top of the stairs, dripping all over the place, towel wrapped tightly around her chest. Her heart feels like it’s going to beat right out of her chest, and she’d be perfectly content never setting foot in that bathroom again. 

It takes Bella a second to appear, something clanging in the general direction of the kitchen. 

“What the fuck,” she starts, staring up at Kendall. She has flour on her face, and any other time, Kendall would find it endearing, but right now, all she can focus on is the giant bug in her shower. 

“I know they say save water, shower with a friend, but like. I can’t extend that to insects, and there’s a fucking cockroach in the shower and there’s only room for one of us in this house.” 

Bella backs away from the foot of the stairs, already shaking her head.

“Nope, no, I can’t go in there, Ken. Can we just like. Shut the door? For a few days? Fuck. Can’t they survive the apocalypse, or something? Let’s just start with shutting the door. You can use my shower, it’s fine.”

The water from the shower is starting to cool on her skin, and for a second Kendall forces herself to focus on that, closes her eyes and enjoys being cool for the first time in the week that she’s been here. 

“You can shut the door, I already had to be within an inch of that thing, I’m not going near that room again, sorry Bells, you’re going to have to take one for the team here,” Kendall says, and she’s marching down the stairs before she can think twice and grabbing Bella’s arm.

 

“Fine! Fine, but if it jumps out at me or something, you’re the thing I’m going to be burning down, okay, I’m not emotionally equipped for this kind of confrontation,” Bella says, starting to giggle as Kendall pushes her up the stairs. 

-

It’s an easy out, using the bug as an excuse to follow Bella into her room that night. Kendall has her own down the hall. The mattress might be slightly uncomfortable mattress, but it’s nice. Totally acceptable, for all intents and purposes. It’s still strange, how alone she feels, even living in Bella’s pocket. She lived alone in LA for a few years, but it never felt like being alone. This is almost like sensory deprivation, and she’s not sure how long she can actually deal with it before she starts to go crazy.

“Can I crash in here? Not sure I’m over the emotional trauma of showering with a huge insect,” Kendall says, leaning against Bella’s door frame. It’s late, and her room is pitch black. Bella’s windows face the back of the house, and there aren’t any streetlights peeking through the curtains, so everything’s shades of black, velvety and comforting. 

“I still kick in my sleep,” Bella warns, and Kendall just laughs and feels her way across the room, lets herself fall forward when her knees hit the edge of the mattress.

Bella’s sheets are worn and soft, cool against Kendall’s skin, and she crawls up the bed and buries her face in the pillow next to Bella’s.

Bella doesn’t say anything else, just stretches out on her back, blinks at the ceiling a few times before she closes her eyes, her lashes smudges against her cheek in the dark. 

It’s a little creepy, watching Bella sleep, Kendall admits. It’s just been so long since they’ve done this, been so entrenched in each others’ lives. Making breakfast at noon, dragging themselves into work at night, leaving at three am and trading off who gets first shower now that the guest bathroom’s been quarantined. 

She looks defenseless like this, painfully young, and Kendall’s chest aches a little with how lonely Bella must’ve been to come out here. To drop everything like that, with no guarantee of anyone coming with her. It’s the polar opposite of stage Bella, glittery and unforgiving, drawing everyone’s eyes to her and smiling under their gaze. Kendall feels transfixed by that, sometimes, like Bella has that kind of power over her, too. This is even more intoxicating, though. Private moments like this, that don’t belong to anyone else, no undercurrent of what they can do at work. 

Kendall rolls over on her stomach and extends her arm enough that their pinkies are brushing. It’s grounding, starts to calm the buzz under her skin that hasn’t dissipated since everything that happened with Kim. 

Maybe roommates are the answer, she thinks. Kendall remembers screaming for her dad or Rob when she was a kid at anything that resembled a bug. Even when she moved out, there were ten people she could call and have with her within fifteen minutes. They’d have to screen everyone, obviously. Kendall can’t even let herself think about the people that populate the internet, has to seriously limit her social media time these days. It could be good, though. Like, locals to ease the transition, or something. And they can always step in, force their hand, if they have to. Kendall tries to squash the thought of Kim, of the way she was almost overpowered. This is different, they’re different. Maybe not unstoppable, but. Close.

-

Kendall sits on it for a day. Goes through the motions that are becoming more and more familiar each day, and doesn’t bring it up until their night off, when they’re deep in a booth at this wine tasting bar, two courses in, lips stained red in the dim lighting. 

Bella’s giggly and her cheeks are flushed, alcohol simmering in their veins, and Kendall doesn’t let herself think about the fact that this feels more like a date than anything she’s been on in the past two years. She forces herself to focus, shakes her hair out then pulls it up into a bun, blinks herself out of it when her eyes catch on Bella’s lips, vampy and dark from wine. 

“What’s your stance on roommates?”

Kendall can tell Bella wasn’t expecting that to come out of her mouth, and she bites her lip. She worries that she’s overstepped for a second, crashed into Bella’s careful world with _I want, I want, I want._

“Yeah,” Bella says after a second, and Kendall can almost see the cogs still turning in her head, everything clicking into place. 

She takes another sip of wine, winces a little when it burns a little on the way down. Red wine’s not her favorite, but she’s trying to branch out. 

“It’s your call, obviously, like tell me if I’m being pushy. I know I get like, blinders, sometimes.”

Bella takes a sip of her own wine and picks the last piece of crostini off the plate they’ve been sharing. 

“I feel good about it, I think. We gotta establish a strict screening process, though. You never fucking know,” she says, tossing back the rest of her wine.

And Kendall knows, she really does, she just wishes she didn’t, so she smirks at Bella from across the table, takes a long sip of her wine, and pretends she doesn’t notice the way Bella’s looking at her like she can see right through her. 

“Obviously,” Kendall snorts, and she doesn’t delve into the anxiety that comes with inviting strangers to live with them, because it’s her idea in the first place, and she needs it, on some level. Not just because of the bugs.

They’re past tipsy by the time they leave, the sky deep purple when they step outside and the air heavy on their skin. They get their fair share of cat calls, and Kendall doesn’t even bother to ward them off. It feels like each one pushes them closer together, and their hands brush going up the porch steps. A year ago, Kendall would’ve drawn back and made some off the wall comment about something, anything, to distract from the frisson she felt. She’s worlds away from who she was a year ago, though, years away from who she was last week, if she’s being honest with herself, so she leans into it instead. 

They’re pressed together arm to arm by the time they get to the front door, and Bella leans into her even further when she digs into her back pocket for the key, and Kendall doesn’t ask, just follows Bella down the hall and into her room, and they fall onto the bed so hard that the mattress bounces under their weight.

She doesn’t remember falling asleep, but the crick in her neck is awful when she wakes up, and her mouth tastes like red wine and death, but there’s a languidness to everything that she’s never felt before, like she’s starting to settle into the idea of being here. She stumbles into the shower, mercifully bug-free, and tries to wash away the headache that’s banging at her temples.

Bella’s stretching and blinking the sleep out of her eyes when Kendall leans against the doorframe of her room, steam from the shower seeping in. 

“Absolutely no fuckboys,” Bella croaks, face smushed against her pillow. “For the roommate post. No fuckboys.”

-

They get mostly creeps, which Kendall expected from this kind of thing. Sloppy looking drunks, lecherous guys and bottle blondes tying cherry stems with their tongues in Facebook photos. People old enough to be their parents, which, no. 

Cara’s different, though. She doesn’t have any social media for them to stalk, which could be a red flag, but they don’t find anything suspect, and her response to their ad is cheeky rather than creepy.

She lets Bella set it up. After their shift, when the floor shifts from dancing to an open mic, because that’s the kind of thing they do in New Orleans, apparently. It’s a smart move, Kendall thinks. Public, but not too public. There’s safety in numbers, and for a split second, Kendall wishes they’d come up with some kind of sign. To cut and run if it gets like. Weird. She shakes her hair out of her eyes, tries to get rid of most of her body glitter with make up wipes. It’s pretty ineffectual, and she’ll regret not making a better effort when they get home and she wrecks her bedsheets, but it’ll also make her look ethereal in the dim light of the club, so Kendall counts it as a win.

Bella’s left all of hers on. Kendall can see her back in the mirror, shimmery when she moves. Kendall gets caught up in the long lines of her back, can’t make herself look away even though she knows she should. All she can think about is the way Bella curved around her in her sleep, and the way she got up before Bella woke. To save the both of them from something, she’s not sure what. Doesn’t want to parse it out in her brain just yet. 

She lets her eyes slide out of focus until Bella’s just blurry shapes in the mirror, light catching her skin every time she moves. It’s hard to shake herself out of it, the exhaustion that comes with getting up on stage, working her magic on that many people at once. It settles into her limbs, the constant push and pull, and she’s weirdly more conscious of it now than she was in LA. It’s different, post-everything. Kendall’s careful now, and that word wasn’t even in her vocabulary before. She was fast and loose, fluttering her way around a city that ate most people alive. 

New Orleans is all dark corners, and she doesn’t know what’s waiting for her around the next one. It’s not the closeness of LA, but she’s gun-shy now, puts her walls up just to take them down again. Finding a happy medium is easier said than done, it feels like. 

“Ready to see if we’ve found the one person who isn’t a total creep?”

Bella’s voice shakes Kendall out of her reverie. She blinks, eyes dry from staring so long. She wonders idly if Bella noticed, but she doesn’t look flushed or nervous when Kendall turns around, just smiles at her, lips still stained red. 

“They’re gonna be a fucking creep, who else even replies to Craigslist posts like this, right?”

Kendall rubs the tiredness out of her eyes and comes away with glitter all over her fingers. She’ll be washing it off for days.

“Guess it’s our fault for posting it in the first place, then,” Bella replies, and she grabs Kendall’s wrist and drags her towards the exit. 

Someone’s covering Riptide when they make their way out of the dressing room, voice low and and painfully earnest. They’re matching, because Bella insisted. 

“We need to look like a united front! It’s like, intimidating. Right? Supernatural friends. Tall girls in all black take no shit.”

Kendall had laughed at the time, but she’s glad they agreed to it now. It’s not like the club is seedy, at least as far as dance clubs in New Orleans. But she assumes everyone else is there for the same reasons she and Bella are: because they’re running from something. There’s desperation everywhere, all different kinds, and Kendall’s got feelers out all the time. She assesses rooms in ways she didn’t before, checks to make sure she knows where the nearest exit is. It’s reflexive, and sometimes she feels like she has to peel herself off the ceiling and shake herself out of her head.

“I’ll get a booth, okay? Wanna get some red headed sluts to loosen up?” 

Bella grins at her and heads for the bar. Kendall stands there for a minute and watches her go. She turns back and looks at her once she gets to the bar, and Kendall smiles, caught out. She gives Bella a little wave before she turns to stake out a booth. She picks one towards the back, far enough from the stage that they won’t be interrupted, but close enough that whoever’s singing should cover their conversation. 

Kendall sinks into the booth, wincing at the way her thighs stick to the fake leather cover. She hopes desperately that it gets wiped down at the end of every night, but she highly doubts it. The table’s not too sticky when she rests her elbows on it though, so maybe she won’t have to take a decontamination level shower when they get home. 

The girl singing has moved on from Riptide to Drops of Jupiter, and Kendall can appreciate the range within the longing for someone you can’t have theme, at least. She’s tall and model skinny and gripping the microphone like a lifeline. No one’s paying that much attention to her, but she’s singing like she’s performing to an arena full of people there to see her, when in reality it’s just a mediocre club in Louisiana.

 _Points for effort,_ Kendall thinks. She hums along until Bella slides into the booth across from her, a tray of six shot glasses balanced in her hand. Kendall raises her eyebrows.

“What,” Bella says defensively. “Two shots for each of us, come on Kenny, live a little. This’ll be easier with alcohol, anyway. Not sure I could stomach it without.”

She sets the tray down and adjusts the straps of her black tank top. Kendall’s always been a little jealous of her cleavage. Totally normal when you have boobs as small as she does, as much as she likes being able to go braless. The glitter’s hardly noticeable this far away from the lights of the stage, but Kendall still catches flashes of it when Bella reaches to pass Kendall a shot glass. 

“To finding roommates that aren’t bottom crawlers of the internet,” she says, holding out her glass for Kendall to clink. 

“To finding roommates who can eliminate bugs that can theoretically survive the apocalypse without a meltdown,” Kendall says.

The shot burns going down, and it’s sickly sweet, the tart cranberry doing nothing to mask the cloyingly peach schnapps. It’s good though, sends warmth through her veins, and it reminds her of the way they used to raid Khloe’s stash of illicit liquor when they were sixteen. Every sleepover ended in a hangover, and Kendall remembers how they abandoned the fruit juice in favor of straight shots when they got older, wincing down tequila straight from the bottle.

Kendall puts her empty glass back on the tray gingerly. The girl on stage is bowing out for the night, thanking everyone with a voice that’s deeper than Kendall expected.

“Prospective roomie is late,” Bella says, plucking her second shot off the tray. “Wanna do shot number two now? Or is that too much pre gaming for an interview that’s probably not even gonna happen?”

Kendall laughs and pulls her attention away from the stage. Bella’s fingers are wrapped around her glass, and her black nail polish is so chipped that it makes Kendall wince.

“You have to let me fix your nails, Bells,” she says, and she reaches out to take Bella’s hand like a reflex. Her nails are bitten down and her cuticles are ragged and it looks painful. 

“They’re pretty fucked, I know. I was going to get them done before I left LA, but I figured it didn’t matter.”

Kendall hums in response and drops her hand. Prospective roommate is now ten minutes late. They’re probably being stood up. Kendall’s been there before, and while punctuality isn’t a deal breaker, she doesn’t sit around and wait for people as a general rule. Bella’s different, though. Patient. She’s still willing to give people chances. Kendall’s not sure how she does it. 

“Good thing you have me here, you’ll scare everyone off with those. We can have a manicure sleepover like we used to. Relive old times, drink alcohol that we hate right out of the bottle.”

Bella rolls her eyes and laughs.

“Yeah, and those were some of the worst ideas we ever had. Literally who does their nails right before they go to bed? How many times did we wake up with it smeared all over the place before we realized how stupid we were?”

Kendall shrugs. It did take them an embarrassingly long time to figure that one out, but she’s all for staying in and living out the glory days of her youth now, even though she’s not even twenty one. 

“How long are we going to give this girl? I think fifteen minutes is more than generous, honestly, I can tell when people are fucking with me and this seems like that,” she says, picking up a shot.

“I guess if she doesn’t show we each get an extra shot, so all isn’t lost,” Bella says. “Another five minutes and we’re out.”

It doesn’t take five minutes, though. Kendall’s got her shot glass at her lips when Cara shows up. She eyes her over the rim of the glass and downs it, not breaking her gaze. Cara smirks at her and raises an eyebrow before elbowing Kendall further into the booth so she can sit.  
Post everything, this is exactly the kind of invasion of space that Kendall is trying to avoid, but she’s frozen in half surprise, half relief that Cara looks like her picture and isn’t a forty five year old man, so she lets herself be elbowed, thighs still sticky against the seat. 

“Sorry I’m late,” Cara says, slightly out of breath. “My watch is always running slow. I’d fix it, but, you know.”

Kendall doesn’t. She also doesn’t want to jeopardize this interview before it even gets started, so she lets it go. 

“I’m Kendall,” she says, and she hesitates for a second before holding out her hand. It’s awkward, but Cara goes with it, smiles wide and grabs Kendall’s hand in a firm handshake.

“We’ve met,” she says, like that’s not something that’s going to weird Kendall out. She feels a flash of fear washing over her like ice water for a split second and her tongue feels heavy in her mouth.

“Are you stalking us or something?”

Kendall can’t help the laugh that bubbles up at Bella’s words. It’s nervous energy, and there’s a weird hum between the three of them that she can’t put her finger on. Cara joins in like it’s her right, like they’re long lost friends, and Kendall doesn’t know how to feel about, the ease with which Cara’s slotted herself between them. 

“Stalking’s not my style, babe, don’t worry,” Cara smirks at them and reaches out for the two shot glasses that are left on the tray. She downs them quickly, one right after the other, and slams the empty glasses back down on the table.

“That’s not really comforting, you know that, right?” 

The words taste rusty like blood in Kendall’s mouth, and her whole body is tense, ready to cut and run if she has to. She wishes she and Bella were on the same side of the table.

“I think we’re done here,” Bella says, and her eyes flit to Kendall, wide and scared in the low light. 

Kendall goes to move, ignores the pain of her thighs coming unstuck from the booth, but Cara grabs her wrist before she gets far. It’s gentle, the circle of her fingers around Kendall’s wrist, but it’s like there’s an electric current between them, and she gets a flash of nostalgia, even though there’s nothing between them to miss. They’ve only just met, she reminds herself, frozen in place. 

“Wait,” Cara starts. “Sorry, I’m always putting my foot in it like this. Fucking it up before I even start. Do over?”

Her fingers are still resting against Kendall’s wrist, soft and cool even in the late night heat. There’s no reason for them to stay. Cara’s given them enough reasons to walk out. But Kendall forces herself to look up. There’s nothing threatening in Cara’s face, just heavy eyebrows and dark circles and a tiny, tired smile. It’s painfully familiar, defeat and hope and exhaustion, just like Bella. Just like her. 

Kendall looks over at Bella, and she gives a tiny nod. Kendall exhales and tries to force her body to relax. When she pulls her arm out of Cara’s grasp, Cara lets her go. 

“Five minutes.”

Cara rolls her eyes at Bella and slouches back against the booth. 

“Brevity isn’t my strong suit, honestly, and I think the whole story’ll take a bit longer than that, but if you insist—”

“You really want to waste your five minutes complaining about the fact that we’re only giving you five minutes?” Kendall interrupts.

Cara closes her eyes and blows out a breath. She sits like that for a second and lets the noise of the club overtake them, low voices and laughter simmering under someone singing Hands to Myself. When she opens her eyes again, she’s looking right at Kendall like she can see right inside her to all the fear and uncertainty and the way she doesn’t trust Cara, not at all.

“I know what you are,” Cara says, finally. “Or like, what you can do, whatever. I know some people don’t like to define themselves by what they do, you’d be surprised how sensitive people get about that. I’ve been slapped more times than I care to think about, if I’m honest. Trying to put my foot in it less these days, but it doesn’t seem like I’m doing a great job.”

“Not so far, no,” Kendall says, and it’s kind of mean, but she’s not used to someone pulling back the curtain so abruptly on her secrets, even if they’re more faux secrets than anything else, at this point. 

“Sorry, sorry. I’ve only got, what, three minutes now? We’ll do the Cliffs Notes version, I suppose.”

Kendall glances over at Bella, unease still sitting heavy in her stomach. Bella’s face is blank. Kendall hates how good she is at that, at blocking everyone out. Hiding what she’s feeling from the rest of world. She feels a little guilty, like she should’ve seen this coming. Bella was her best friend, once. Is still her best friend, really, even if they drifted a little along the way. 

Cara’s looking back and forth between them when Kendall turns her attention back to her, lips pressed in a small smile, like she’s figured out something Kendall hasn’t even realized herself yet.

“You’ve not figured it out yet, but you will.”

Kendall just stares her down, feels the heat rush to her cheeks, even though she’s not sure why, exactly. 

“You’re really not helping your case, you know that, right?”

Cara shuts her eyes and nods, grips her leather jacket—ridiculous in the heat of the deep south, Kendall thinks, and she’s done a lot of ridiculous shit in the name of fashion—and purses her lips.

“I can like. See things. It’s a bit time travelly, I think that’s the easiest way to describe it. I can remember past lives, anyway, so I guess it’s not time travel in the strictest sense, but this is Cliffs Notes, right? Have I failed? You’re doing that talking thing with your eyes and it’s always annoying being the third wheel.”

 _What the fuck,_ Kendall thinks. 

“What the fuck,” she says, because Bella’s just looking across the table at Cara thoughtfully, like this is actually something she’s considering as real. Cara looks vaguely catlike, smirking and satisfied under Bella’s gaze, and Kendall hates it a little bit. 

“You’ve gotta be kidding. Bells,” she starts, and Bella glances in her direction briefly, eyes glittery and wild. Kendall grits her teeth. 

“You know this doesn’t make you look any less like a stalker, right?” Bella says, and Kendall heaves a quiet sigh of relief even as she hears the curiosity in Bella’s voice. 

Cara laughs, unexpectedly deep and with an edge of bitterness. 

“Fortunately for both of you, I’m well versed in the kind of doubt and negativity.”

“Blow us away already, jesus,” Kendall forces out. Her palms are slick with sweat and her thighs are cemented to the pleather booth and she wants out of this club and out from underneath the way Cara’s looking at her like she’s transparent.

“There’s a pun in there somewhere, but since I assume I’m still on thin ice here, I won’t go looking for it.”

Bella laughs, quiet and surprised, and when Kendall looks over at her, she’s leaning back in the booth, tension draining out of the slump of her shoulders. 

“I know what you are. Or like, your thing. Some people get fussy when I define them by the fact that they’re sireny, or whatever. You know what I mean, though.”

This is what Kendall imagines being hit by a train feels like. It’s sensory overload and deprivation all at once, it’s being acutely aware of every inch of her skin and feeling like she’s hovering outside her body, and her tongue’s too heavy in her mouth to speak. 

“We’re not—we don’t fucking lure people to their deaths,” Bella says in a rush, and Kendall can tell she didn’t mean to let it slip out by the way her face blanches before she’s even finished her sentence.

Cara rolls her eyes and waves it off, like they’re having a totally normal, casual conversation. A new normal, Kendall’s brain unhelpfully suggests.

“Don’t get caught up in the semantics, babe, I’m not accusing you of murder or anything that extreme. Not this time, anyway. But let’s not pretend you’re not buzzing under all that glitter at the fact that someone’s finally said it, yeah?”

Kendall splutters, can’t quite get out any words yet, and Cara reaches over and grasps her wrist again, tighter this time. It feels like an electric shock running all down her spine, like a piece falling into place in the middle of all the unknowns. She rips her arm back but she doesn’t know what to do with her hands. She feels caged in, thinks that maybe this is what Bella felt like back home. 

“You can’t—how do you know?” Bella whispers harshly, and Kendall’s hands twitch in her lap. All she wants is to reach across the table, to grasp Bella’s hand in hers. Something grounding in the middle of a conversation that’s, frankly, fucking bat shit crazy. 

Cara leans forward, resting her elbows on the table. Her jacket bunches up around her ears, and she looks like she’s a kid playing dress up, drowning in clothes that aren’t meant for her. 

“I’ve been on the receiving end of the two of you once or twice,” she says, voice clear over the din of the club. “You’ve got more uh, influence, let’s say, than you think. Got me into some sticky situations. I have to admit, it’s nice to have the upper hand this time around.”

Everything in Kendall is screaming that this is a giant fucking joke, that they’ve just stumbled upon yet another person who’s totally certifiable, and that this is what they get for posting on Craigslist. There’s something about the way Cara looks at them that plants a seed of doubt in her head, though. The fond, kind of distant appraisal, like she knows their next move and is just waiting for them to play it. 

“Why don’t you get us all another round,” Bella says, mirroring Cara’s position. She’s all cleavage and warm skin, a sharp contrast to the way Cara’s bundled her wiry frame into a jacket and skinnies that are going to be a real bitch for her to get out of. 

“Um,” Kendall starts, ready to put her foot down, but Cara’s quick, flashes them a toothy grin, like she knows she’s won, and heaves herself out of the booth and heads in the direction of the bar.

“I think she’s it,” Bella says, and Kendall used to think they were on the same wavelength, but right now, she doesn’t have the slightest idea where Bella’s head is.

“I’m sorry, but I’m going to need you to break this down for me, I just. What the fuck, Bella. She basically admitted to stalking us, I don’t get how you’re okay with that!”

Kendall can feel the unease rising up in her stomach, and she’s not sure another round of shots is going to do much to quell it.

“Kenny,” Bella starts, and she reaches across the table to grab for Kendall’s hands. Kendall lets her, because what else is she going to do. It’s a little like a lifeline, Bella’s sweaty palms and fingernails bitten down the the quick, and it soothes the frantic rush of fuck fuck fuck in her head.

“I don’t think telling us that she’s—gifted is equivalent to stalking. She can’t help it any more than we can.”

The look on Bella’s face is desperate, and it’s not what Kendall expected. She hadn’t realized how comparatively easy everything was when Bella was drowning right next to her. Kendall’s not sure she’s realized the extent of it even now. She’d always reveled in it, never hidden it away. It always felt like her right, rather than something to be helped, and it’s jarring, realizing that that’s how Bella thinks of it. 

“You really don’t think she’s fucking with us?”

Bella digs her fingers into Kendall’s palm when she says it, and glances over at the bar. Kendall follows her gaze, sees the blonde in Cara’s hair glowing and the way she throws her head back laughing with the bartender. Carefree and childlike, leather jacket and all, like she hasn’t just thrown a wrench in Kendall’s new life. 

“I think,” Bella says carefully, “that we’re here for different reasons.”

Kendall pulls back a little at that, and she feels the loss of Bella’s hands right away.

“I think it’s okay, good, even, that we are! But we just—it’s different, you know?”

Kendall doesn’t have anything to say. Her tongue’s too heavy in her mouth again, and she’s too aware of the sweat slicking her thighs. She thought it’d be like it was before, kind of, as unrealistic as that was. Like a constant sleepover, giggling at three am, the two of them against the world, pinky swear.

She looks over at the bar again, anywhere but at Bella, because there’s a lump in her throat and she’s blinking way too much for it not to be suspicious. Cara’s leaning against the bar now, seemingly deep in conversation with the bartender. His frosted tips put NSYNC era Justin’s to shame, Kendall thinks idly. There’s no way Cara can hear them from here, over the rumble of the crowd and the singing on stage, but it’s like she knows that they need space. It’s unsettling, even if it’s kind, the way Cara’s read them. Kendall hates it, as it turns out. Hates feeling like she doesn't have the upper hand, like she can’t see every exit at all times. 

“Guess so,” Kendall says finally, tearing her eyes away from Cara. She might not trust her, but there’s something electric about her and the way she moves, slots herself between them like she’s been there before. 

“Kenny,” Bella says again, and her voice is pleading and it digs in deep between Kendall’s ribs like a stitch and hurts when she inhales. “It’s gonna be good, okay? What are the odds of finding someone like. Kind of like us? We can give it a week, at least. That online background check didn’t turn up anything weird, anyway.” 

Kendall can’t put her finger on the feeling she has when she catches Cara’s eye at the bar. It’s not familiarity. She’s never seen Cara before in her life. She’d never even entertained the idea of other people who could do stuff like she could. She’d never given it much thought, because it was easy like breathing, an extension of herself. 

“If we end up murdered in our beds, I swear to god, Bella,” Kendall says, finally, and she means to sound threatening and strong because she’s capable of being both of those things, but her voice is shakier than she wants to admit.

“Well, if she’s legit, that won’t be the end, anyway,” Bella says teasingly, a smile curling across her lips, because she knows she’s gotten her way.

“I hate you sometimes, I hope you know that. One week. One. No buts. Anything weird and she’s out, okay?”

Bella nods quickly at her, trying to fight against her widening smile and failing miserably. Kendall wants desperately to be on that same page, curious and excited and flexing her wings, metaphorically speaking. She’s not, though. She’s still ready to take off, to head for the nearest escape route at the slightest sign that something’s off. Even here, far away from the hidden dangers of LA, the ones she didn’t see until it was almost too late. 

“So? What’s the verdict?”

Cara’s voice is rough from laughing so much at the bar, and cigarettes, probably. Kendall wrinkles her nose. She nudges into Kendall’s side and pushes her way back into the booth, and Kendall scoots away, wants to put as much space between them as she can, like that’ll help clear her head.

“We’re open to a one week trial. Like, to see how you fit in. Make sure you’re not fucking with us. And if you do, well. Apparently you know what we can do, so.” 

Kendall bites down on a smirk. Bella’s voice is sweet and lilting, but Kendall doesn’t miss how loaded her words are, the promise of a threat running just underneath them. She looks deadly like this, every inch someone not to be messed with. Nothing like the Bella Kendall grew up with. This Bella is dark eyes and cheekbones that could cut glass, a smile that’ll pull you in, eat you up, and spit you out. Kendall shivers a little, feels her nipples tighten under the thin fabric of her tank top despite the heat. 

“Fair enough,” Cara says. “Don’t really fancy being on the receiving end of how charming you can be, really. No fuckery, I promise. She holds her hands up, tilts her head and smirks. “Unless you’re up for the fun kind. But I’ll be good. Keep my hands to myself.”

Kendall stays wedged in the corner of the booth, tries not to focus too much on the way Cara looks over at her when she says fuckery, but it makes her feel naked all the same. 

“Full disclosure, I think this is a terrible idea, just so we’re all on the same page,” Kendall says, shooting a glare at both of them. 

For a split second, she’s tempted to take control, push Cara out of the booth with her words, put a damper on Bella’s excitement. But she doesn’t. She remembers being fifteen and pinky swearing under the canopy of Bella’s hot pink twin bed that they’d never do it to each other. It’s probably the only promise she’s ever kept in her life. Maybe that makes her a bad person, or maybe it means she just knows what’s important and what isn’t. 

“Seems like I left those shots at the bar,” Cara starts, still looking at Kendall like she’s something to be solved. “Want to bring them back, Bella? Think I’m going to pop out for a cigarette. Kenny’ll keep me company.”

Bella smiles like it’s all fine and normal, but every nerve in Kendall’s body is on edge. 

“Be nice, K,” is all she says before she slips out gracefully, sways her way over to the bar, everyone’s eyes on her. 

“Let’s step out for a minute, yeah?” 

Cara doesn’t even wait for her response, just grabs her arm and pulls her up and out of the booth, weaves her way through the crowd effortlessly. 

It’s hot outside, but not as stifling as it was in the club. Kendall can feel the sweat starting to cool on her forehead. She leans back against the wall and makes sure there’s a foot of space between them. Cara’s digging around in the pocket of her jacket, brow furrowed until she pulls out a box of American Spirits and a lighter. 

“Smoking kills,” Kendall says as Cara takes the first drag. 

“Everything kills, babe,” Cara says, and blows a cloud of smoke right in Kendall’s face. She shuts her eyes against it and coughs, backs away even further.

“I’m gonna need you to stop calling me that. Not your friend, not your babe.”

Cara leans back against the wall and shuts her eyes. She takes another hit of the cigarette, and Kendall can’t stop looking at the shadows under her eyes and the hollows of her cheeks. She’s pretty, in a Tinkerbell kind of way, Kendall thinks. Spritely, almost, all round face and upturned nose. Kendall blinks herself out of it and stares down at her shoes instead. 

“It’s a reflex, sorry. Got my fair share of bad habits. Nothing too terrible, though, I promise. I’m a bit messy, but I’ll clean up after myself when prompted.”

“Is that supposed to make me like you more, or?”

“I quit smoking a year ago,” Cara starts, staring at the cigarette between her fingers. “My girlfriend hated it, couldn’t stand the way the smell stuck to her clothes. Said it was a coping mechanism, helping me hide from my problems, or some shit.” She pauses to take another drag, and Kendall focuses in on the cherry of the cigarette, glowing bright as Cara inhales. “So I quit smoking. Then she quit me.”

Kendall doesn’t know what to do with other people’s sadness. Aside from the usual ice cream and bad eighties movies, it’s paralyzing. It’s worse, now. She doesn’t know Cara, isn’t even sure if she wants to. But she still hates the idea of people being left. 

“That’s shitty,” Kendall says, finally. Most of Cara’s cigarette is gone. Kendall wonders if Bella’s worried about where they are. 

“I’m done with the pity party, don’t worry. But you should know that we’re both running from things, here. I’m not here to steal your girl, or whatever. Just trying to get away from stuff. I know you are, too. You’re not like Bella.”

“Is this your party trick? Guessing at people’s motives?” Kendall can’t help the bite to her voice. It’s better than the shakiness earlier, she guesses, but she wishes she could hide behind a mask like Bella does.

“Nah,” Cara says, dropping her cigarette to the ground and crushing it under her foot. She has black platform sneakers on. Kendall thinks they’re velvet, wishes that she had smaller feet and that she and Cara were close enough that she could borrow them. “Not a party trick if you already know someone.”

“You haven’t really done anything to prove it, you know that, right?”

Cara shrugs and scrapes her hair away from her face. 

“These things take time. We’ve all got it. Some of us have more than others. I just happened to figure you out first. You’ll figure me out, I promise.”

“We should get back inside,” Kendall says, edging towards the door. She feels like Cara’s stripped away a layer of skin and examined her from the inside out, even if she hasn’t said much. 

“Sure,” Cara says easily, voice raspier now from the cigarette. “Fate’s a funny thing, Kendall Jenner. The sooner you wrap your head around that, the easier it’ll be.”

-

Bella’s quiet on their way back, like she knows Kendall’s hurt, somehow. Betrayed is too strong a word, Kendall thinks, especially considering roommates were her idea in the first place. She didn’t think it’d be like this, though. Hadn’t even considered the possibility that they’d stumble upon someone like them. Like Cara. 

It’s quiet except for the heat birds singing, neither of them willing to break the silence. Kendall lets her fingers brush against Bella’s and doesn’t flinch away. They don’t hold hands, just bump into each other gently. Kendall blames it on gravity, doesn’t let herself think about how she just wants to keep Bella all for herself, to hole up inside and never let anyone else touch them. 

She waits until she’s sure Bella’s asleep that night to crawl in bed next to her. She stays on her side, feels her stomach sink at the realization that she’s already thinking of this room as theirs, as something she has a stake in. Kendall lets her eyes track the bumps of Bella’s spine and the way her ribs are still visible. How the straps of her sports bra are so worn that they’re sliding off her shoulders. She’s not used to the foot of space between them. Wants to press herself against the lines of Bella’s body and wake up brand new.

“I’m sorry,” Kendall whispers to Bella’s back. Bella doesn’t stir, and Kendall doesn’t know what she’s apologizing for, if it’s for the way they drifted apart or the way she couldn’t make herself warm up to Cara, but it eases the tight feeling in her chest a little.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm [here](http://polaroidgirlfriend.tumblr.com) on tumblr.


	3. one girl swaying alone//Bella

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "We will be monsters, alone in the world, but we will have each other." - Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
> 
> (Or, witches in New Orleans taking no shit, ft. sirens, time traveling, invisibility, and polyamory.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi. I'm still here, still writing this verse, just currently drowning in my big bang. This is just a tiny piece that takes place immediately post-part 2.

Kendall doesn’t follow her into bed that night, and Bella misses it even if it’s only been a few days. The sheets are too hot against her skin, even though she’s alone in bed and the air conditioner is wheezing from the window across the room.

Her bed feels too big, no one else in it to anchor her when she gets restless and can’t sleep.

Cara’s buzzing under her skin. Bella can’t stop thinking about the way her stomach dropped when Cara called them out, smirked at them from across the table, eyes dark and sad in the low light of the bar.

Bella stretches and listens hard to see if Kendall’s made her way upstairs yet. The air conditioner’s too loud, though, so she just rolls over and stares up at the ceiling until her eyes are blurry and burning. She’s still too hot, her ratty sports bra feels like one article of clothing too many, but she falls asleep before she can take it off.

-

Kendall’s curled up on the opposite side of the mattress when she wakes up. Bella rolls over and stares at her back, the bumps of her spine beneath her thin tank top. The back of her neck’s sunburned, undoubtedly from sitting in endless LA traffic. Bella wants to reach out and bridge the gap between them, press her fingers against the pink skin.

She doesn’t, though, because there’s space between them that she doesn’t know how to get rid of.

It’s not like she didn’t know they came here for different reasons. But they’ve always been different, it’s just never something that actually created any kind of rift between them before.

It’s different now. Miles and miles away from everything they’ve ever known, and Bella feels alive again. Or for the first time, maybe, like she can breathe without having to be afraid of some kind of unforeseeable negative consequence.

Kendall’s growing inward, though. Hiding out. Content to curl up on the couch next to her, to tuck her toes in between the couch cushions and watch endless reruns of Curb Your Enthusiasm before work.

They’ll hold hands on the way home from work, laughing at three a.m. like they did when they were sixteen, but Bella feels every single one of their differences piling up between them, a careful wall that she isn’t sure how to navigate.

Kendall chooses that moment to roll over, and Bella slams her eyes shut reflexively, afraid of getting caught staring, like Kendall will be able to read all of the anxiety on her face.

Keeping your eyes closed when you’re wide awake is hard, Bella realizes after a few seconds. It feels like she’s scrunching them shut, and it can’t possibly look natural. She tries to breathe evenly, relax her shoulders, but she lasts thirty seconds at most before her eyes force their way open again.

Kendall’s staring at her from the other side of the mattress.  
Last night’s mascara and eyeliner are smeared under her eyes, bringing back the dark circles that had started to fade. It makes Bella’s stomach clench with guilt.

She focuses in on how chapped Kendall’s lips look instead, like she’d been up half the night biting at them, and this is the aftermath.

“Hi,” Kendall croaks, lips sticking together slightly. Bella has to stop staring at her mouth.

“Hey,” she says, curling her toes under the sheets.

Everything feels like a minefield. She doesn’t know what they can talk about. What they should talk about, if they should just scrap the roommates idea altogether if this is what it’s going to do to them. Two feet between them on the mattress and Kendall waiting to come to bed until after she fell asleep.

“I’m sorry,” Kendall says, and she stares Bella down, unblinking, huge brown eyes on her face with a laser focus.

Bella feels naked in her sports bra, and she wishes she could move, pull the sheet up over her shoulders. She could, technically, but that movement feels like too much, like it’ll disturb the shaky ground between them even further.

She doesn’t know what to say, and Kendall keeps looking at her, biting her lip. It looks like it hurts, and Bella reaches out reflexively, brushes her fingers against Kendall’s bottom lip before she can stop herself.

She doesn’t mean to let herself linger, but Kendall’s eyes close slowly, so Bella brushes her thumb against her bottom lip, feels the rough and the swelling, and pauses, just for a second. Kendall exhales, and Bella feels that buzz under her skin again at the hot feeling of Kendall’s breath against her skin. She wants to live inside that feeling.

She pulls back, though. Lets her hand rest between them on the mattress. A peace offering, kind of. If they need that, even. She still can’t tell. Doesn’t know how much of this she wants to drag out into the open.

Kendall moves in, closes the gap like she always does. Bella wouldn’t categorize her as pushy, just that she sets her sights on things and gets them, and doesn’t question her ability to do so.

She leaves a few inches between them, but she’s close enough that Bella can smell the smoke and sweat of the club on her skin, along with the familiar remnants of her own shampoo. They still haven’t opened the door to the cockroach bathroom, so Kendall’s adopted everything in Bella’s bathroom as her own.

“What you want is important to me,” Kendall says, and it’s almost a whisper. She’s close enough that Bella could count her eyelashes, if she wanted. And she kind of does want to, at least more than she wants to hash this out.

“I’m sorry if I made you feel like it wasn’t.”

Bella shakes her head, because that’s not it, not exactly. It’s just—there’s still that tiny seed of doubt at the base of her brain, screaming at her that this was a bad idea, that she should be keeping this kind of thing—who she is, what she can do—under wraps. That she shouldn’t let someone in. That they could use it against her, somehow, and she’d be even more trapped than when she was hiding it all. She still doesn’t know how to move past other people’s doubt, doesn’t know how to not internalize it and make it her own.

“You didn’t, I just. I came here to be like. Less safe? That sounds bad, but I don’t want to live like I was at home. And part of that is letting people in.”

Kendall closes what’s left of the gap between them, buries her face in Bella’s neck, and Bella slides her arms around Kendall’s waist instinctively, like there’s nowhere else for them to go.

When Kendall presses her lips against her neck, hot and unfamiliar, Bella inhales sharply, the smell of cigarettes and her own shampoo filling her nose.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm [here](http://polaroidgirlfriend.tumblr.com) on tumblr.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm [here](http://polaroidgirlfriend.tumblr.com) on tumblr.


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